Most AcroYogis have a warm-up. Almost nobody has a cool-down.
Which is odd, because acro does specific things to your body that don't happen in other movement practices, and the hour after a session matters more than most people think for whether you can train again on Thursday.
What acro actually does to you
Different from a gym session or a run, and worth naming so you know what you're recovering from.
Wrists take sustained load in extension. Hand-to-hand, handstands, basing on hands. Not a big range of motion — just a lot of time at the end of one.
Bases compress their lumbar spine. Repeatedly, under load, often on hard ground.
Flyers hold isometric tension for long stretches. Which fatigues differently from moving under load and tends to show up as deep, dull soreness the next day.
Everyone's shoulders work overhead a lot. Usually the thing that quietly accumulates over months.
Recovery that ignores this and just says "stretch and hydrate" isn't much use.
The first ten minutes
Don't get in the car straight after your last attempt.
Move gently for a few minutes. Walk, easy swings, shake it out. Let your heart rate come down before you sit.
Decompress your spine if you based. Hanging from anything, a gentle supported backbend, or lying with your legs up a wall. Two or three minutes. This is the single highest-return recovery thing a base can do.
Better still: get flown therapeutically. Folded leaf or a bat hang at the end of a session does more for a base's back than any stretch you can do alone.
Wrists, gently. Slow circles, gentle flexion both directions. Not aggressive stretching on tissue you've just loaded hard.
Later that day
Eat something with protein reasonably soon. Not a supplement conversation — just don't train hard and then not eat for five hours, which acro people do constantly because jams run late.
Rehydrate more than you think. Basing in a warm room is genuinely dehydrating and you won't have noticed.
Longer holds now, not straight after. This is when a proper two-minute hamstring or hip flexor hold does its work — after the session, not before, and not immediately after either.
Between sessions
Soft tissue work where it's tight. Forearms after a lot of hand balancing. Glutes and hamstrings for bases. Thoracic spine for basically everyone. A ball against a wall or the floor is enough — you don't need equipment, though teak massage balls are firmer than a tennis ball if you want something that actually gets in.
Sleep is the actual recovery tool. Everything else on this page is a rounding error next to it.
Move on your off days. Walking, swimming, easy mobility. Complete rest is usually worse than gentle movement for soreness.
Sore versus injured
The distinction that matters most, and the one people get wrong.
Normal: dull, diffuse muscle soreness, both sides, worst 24–48 hours after, better with gentle movement, gone within three or four days.
Not normal: sharp or pinching pain, one side only, pain in a joint rather than a muscle, anything radiating down a limb, numbness or tingling, swelling, or pain that's worse the second morning than the first.
The second list means stop and get it looked at. Training through it is how a two-week problem becomes a six-month one. I've done that. It's not worth it.
The unglamorous truth about wrists
Wrists end more acro careers than dramatic falls do, and it's always the same story: a niggle, ignored for months, that becomes something that needs real time off.
If your wrists are sore after every session, that's a signal, not a personality trait. Reduce hand-loaded volume, do the conditioning, and use wrist support or blocks to reduce extension while you fix it. Details in solo training.
A five-minute version
If you do nothing else after a session:
- Two minutes decompressing your spine — hang, or legs up a wall
- One minute of gentle wrist movement
- Two minutes on whatever's tightest
- Water, and food within the hour
That's most of the benefit for almost no effort, and it's the difference between training twice a week for years and training hard for three months then taking two off.
Related reading: Therapeutic flying · Basing with tight hamstrings · AcroYoga injuries and healing faster
General training information, not medical advice. Anything sharp or persistent belongs with a physio or doctor.