It is considered absolutely essential to wait for at least 20 minutes after your workout before you hit the shower.
All in all, your cool-down should take about 15-25 minutes — so, that's the expert-recommended to time you should wait to shower after exercising!
Ideally, when you stop sweating profusely in about 20-30 minutes you can take a shower right away. So next time you feel the urge to jump right in the shower, remember to give yourself time to dry off your sweat and cool down.
Eat after you exercise
To help your muscles recover and to replace their glycogen stores, eat a meal that contains both carbohydrates and protein within two hours of your exercise session if possible. Consider a snack if your meal is more than two hours away. Good post-workout food choices include: Yogurt and fruit.
If you don't feel like showering after a workout, you really don't have to. Sweat is sterile, so it's actually OK to skip a post-workout shower, Xu says. "The sweat you produce isn't filled with bacteria or anything that's going to be dangerous," Xu tells SELF.
Doctors agree that if you have a labor-intensive job, live in a hot, humid climate, or exercise—basically, if anything makes you sweat—then yes, medical professionals recommend showering daily.
A nice shower after a sweaty workout feels good! However, not all types of showers have the same advantages. Hot showers can help you sleep better and cool down from heat exposure. However, research says that cold showers are the best way to shower after working out.
Using cold showers (cold water immersion, or CWI, in research), long-term, will attenuate the anabolic signaling that occurs in muscles2 through the reduction of inflammation. I.e., you will decrease your ability to build a maximum amount of muscle, which directly contradicts the goal of building muscle.
Don't – Sit down straightaway
But even if you've reduced intensity for 5-10 minutes after a workout, you may not want to plant yourself back on the couch just yet. Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is a familiar condition to just about everyone—even if you don't know its official name.
Shower. Try to avoid the shower at the gym at all costs. It's most likely full of fungi and other pathogens that can cause infections. Shower at home as soon as possible after a workout.
But, Dr Carson says, “it takes time post-exercise for our metabolism to return to its normal rate and therefore, our body still has the potential for overheating. This is why sweating continues after exercise, sometimes long into the recovery from our session.”
Cold water strains your body — it goes into “survival mode,” working hard to maintain its core temperature. This stimulates your body to increase blood flow circulation. “Increasing circulation redistributes blood and delivers freshly oxygenated blood to areas of the body that need to recover,” Dr. Hame says.
Sweat can feel a little dirty, yes, but think about the other ways you expose yourself to bacteria and pollutants: "People who work out at the gym or have a physically challenging job that exposes them to dirty environments may want to shower twice a day," Ciraldo explains.
Absolutely not. "But make sure you're cleansing your skin immediately afterward," says Jodi Dorf, manager and esthetician at Stars Esthetics Spa in Baltimore. Allowing sweat to dry on the skin can clog pores and cause acne. Dorf explains that sweating is a necessary way for your body to release toxins.
Letting that sweat dry directly on your skin allows it to settle back into your pores, complete with whatever zit-causing toxins it carried with it in the first place.
All that sweat from your workout will cause bacteria and yeast to build up, so if you don't shower, you don't rinse those bugs off and may have an increased risk of irritation and infection, Deirdre Hooper, M.D., a dermatologist at Audubon Dermatology in New Orleans, LA, previously told Shape.
When you eat right before exercising, your body is going to first use the calories you just consumed for fuel. By exercising when it's been about three to four hours since you last ate, your body is more able to burn fat for fuel because other easier methods of fuel aren't available.
When your muscles become shapely from weight training, however, they fight back against the clothing because they're defined instead of malleable. That may manifest itself into tighter-fitting clothing initially as you build muscle and burn fat.