Ask a room of runners what a cool-down does and you will get a confident answer. It flushes lactate. It prevents soreness. It protects you from injury. It is one of the most widely held beliefs in the sport — so widely held that almost nobody had checked whether it was true until 2018.
What the review found
Two researchers went through every study they could find comparing an active cool-down — easy jogging, walking, light cycling in the hour after exercise — against simply stopping. Their review, in Sports Medicine, is the reference point for this question.1
The findings, in their words and ours:
- Injuries. Active cool-downs "do not appear to prevent injuries."
- Next-day performance. Largely ineffective. A few studies found a small benefit; most found none.
- Soreness. Not consistently reduced.
- Lactate. Cleared faster — but there is no evidence that faster lactate clearance improves recovery, and lactate is not the waste product it was once thought to be.
- Long-term adaptation. Doing a cool-down regularly did not blunt training gains. Nor did it enhance them.
A 2026 systematic review covering warm-up through recovery reached a similar position: the evidence on recovery strategies is "limited and heterogeneous."2
What about stretching afterwards?
The usual cool-down ends with static stretches, on the theory that they reduce next-day soreness. A Cochrane review of stretching before or after exercise found it does not produce a clinically meaningful reduction in soreness.3 If you stretch after a run because it feels good, that is a fine reason. It is not a protective one.
Why the belief survives
Partly habit, partly coaching tradition, partly because a cool-down feels like it should work. The review does not dismiss that: it notes that people often report feeling better after one, and there is nothing wrong with doing something because it feels good. The problem is only when it is sold as insurance — because runners who believe they are protected may under-invest in the things that actually are protective.
The half that holds up: warming up
The warm-up is on firmer ground. Neuromuscular warm-up programmes — structured routines of light aerobic work, dynamic movement and control exercises — have been associated with reduced injury rates, with the strongest evidence in team sports.2 For a runner, five to ten minutes of easy jogging and some dynamic movement before the main effort is a reasonable habit with a reasonable basis.
One thing to leave out of it: prolonged static stretching. Holding a stretch for 60 seconds or more has been shown to temporarily reduce maximal force, with the effect growing the longer you hold.4 That is a reason to keep static work out of the minutes before you run. (The picture is not perfectly clean — one small trial in recreational runners found static stretching in the warm-up improved running economy — but the weight of evidence points the other way, and the safe default is dynamic before, static later if at all.)
Where your feet come in
This is the part where we tell you where our product fits, and we want to be careful about why.
Toe-Rx goes on after a run, not before. Not because your body is "warm and receptive" — we have seen that claim and there is no research behind it. It goes on after because of the finding above: a three-to-five-minute toe spread is a long static hold, and the minutes before you need your feet to push off is the wrong time for it. Afterwards you are done for the day, your shoes are off, and the timing question disappears.
What it does when it is on: opens the toes wider than you can unassisted, then gives them something to close against. In the one trial that isolated it, wearing a spacer alone changed nothing over eight weeks; adding the closing movement changed everything measured.5 So the ten minutes is work, not rest.
And for what actually reduces running injuries — as opposed to what feels like it should — the strongest evidence we have found is a year-long randomized trial of foot strengthening in runners. That is written up, with its limits, on the runners' page.
The short version
Warm up: yes, with movement rather than long static holds. Cool down: if you enjoy it. Stretch afterwards: if it feels good, not because it protects you. Foot work: after, seated, ten minutes, every other day. And treat anything sold to you as "insurance" — including this — with the same question you should have asked about the cool-down: has anyone actually tested that?
*These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
References
- Van Hooren B, Peake JM. Do we need a cool-down after exercise? A narrative review of the psychophysiological effects and the effects on performance, injuries and the long-term adaptive response. Sports Medicine. 2018;48(7):1575–1595. doi:10.1007/s40279-018-0916-2. PMID: 29663142. Read it
Narrative review with an evidence heat-map across outcomes. Open access. - Exercise-based strategies from warm-up to training: a systematic review of performance enhancement and injury prevention. 2026. PMID: 42188564. Read it
40 studies. Authors and journal to be confirmed — see notes. - Herbert RD, de Noronha M, Kamper SJ. Stretching to prevent or reduce muscle soreness after exercise. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2011;(7):CD004577.
Confirm citation before publishing — see notes. - Revisiting the stretch-induced force deficit: a systematic review with multilevel meta-analysis of acute effects. Journal of Sport and Health Science, 2024. Read it
- Kim MH, Yi CH, Weon JH, Cynn HS, Jung DY, Kwon OY. Effect of toe-spread-out exercise on hallux valgus angle and cross-sectional area of abductor hallucis muscle in subjects with hallux valgus. Journal of Physical Therapy Science. 2015;27(4):1019–1022. doi:10.1589/jpts.27.1019. PMID: 25995546. Read it
24 participants with hallux valgus, not runners. Both groups wore an orthosis; this shows what adding the movement did.
