Effectiveness of a multimodal post-exercise recovery exercise system on heart rate recovery, perceived exertion, and delayed-onset muscle soreness in physical education students: a pedagogical experimental study

Post-exercise fatigue and delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) are common among Physical Education (PE) students undergoing intensive practical training, yet the practical effectiveness of structured recovery protocols for this population has rarely been tested under real teaching conditions in Vietnam. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a previously developed and content-validated 16-exercise multimodal post-exercise recovery system among PE students at Tay Nguyen University. A 16-week Parallel Group Pretest-Posttest experiment was conducted with 47 students from two cohorts (K23, n = 19; K24, n = 28), stratified by sex and cohort into an Experimental Group (EG, n = 24), which applied the 10-15 minute recovery system under direct instructor guidance after each practical session, and a Control Group (CG, n = 23), which continued the department's existing uncontrolled passive rest routine. Three physiological-psychological indicators were measured at three time points (T0, T8, T16 weeks): heart rate recovery (HR) at 5 minutes post-exercise, perceived exertion (Borg RPE 6-20 scale) at 5 minutes post-exercise, and delayed-onset muscle soreness (0-10 Visual Analogue Scale) across six muscle groups at 48 hours post-exercise. By week 16, the EG showed significantly greater improvement than the CG on every indicator (independent-samples t-test, p < 0.001 for seven of eight comparisons, p < 0.05 for one): HR at 5 minutes fell by 26.1% in the EG versus 2.9% in the CG (Cohen's d = 1.66); perceived exertion fell by 29.3% versus 7.5% (d = 1.62); and DOMS scores fell by 51.0-57.4% across muscle groups in the EG, exceeding the control group's decline by 37.2 to 41.9 percentage points. Feasibility assessment showed 91.7% of EG students rated the system as satisfactory or highly satisfactory, 87.5% intended to continue self-practice after the intervention, and no injuries, adverse reactions, or dropouts were recorded over 16 weeks. These

Findings: provide preliminary evidence that a low-cost, equipment-free, structured multimodal recovery system can be feasibly integrated into PE practical sessions and can meaningfully improve short-term cardiovascular, perceptual, and muscular recovery outcomes relative to passive rest.