Grab Best Fitness Blog Feed...By Karli Taylor
If you are busy like most of us, when you find time to go to the gym you have about 60 minutes to warm up, lift weights, do your cardio, cool down and stretch. When time gets tight, which part do you cut out? The cool down right?
Just as a warm-up prepares your body for exercise, a cool-down prepares your body for the recovery process. During a session of strenuous exercise, your body goes through many stressful processes resulting in muscle and soft tissue trauma. A cool down is the act of gradually lowering body temperature, heart rate, and breathing rate following exercise, and is the first step in the recovery and repair cycle which can decrease the risk of injury, enhance performance, and ensure long term health and fitness.
The purpose of cooling down is to slowly return your body to a state of lower intensity or a resting state. When exercise ends abruptly, blood pressure also drops, which could cause dizziness or fainting. A proper cool down prevents the sudden pooling of blood in your extremities and re-circulates blood back to the heart, skeletal muscles and brain.
Cool down with a low intensity exercise after a vigorous workout. Continue your chosen exercise (or a different one) while gradually slowing its intensity and/or speed. Gradually slowing down the pace and exertion of your activity over several minutes can seem a natural progression, as well as fulfilling the need to include a cool down at the end of your exercise. Still feel like this sounds like a waste of valuable time? A cool down provides the following benefits:
- Allows for the safe and gradual return of heart rate, respiration rate, and core body temperature back to pre-exercise levels.
- Reduces the risk of post-exercise cramping or spasm
- Aids in the prevention of blood pooling, dizziness, and fainting.
- Assists in the removal of waste products which can accumulate during vigorous exercise and delay recovery time.
- Assists in the decrease of post-exercise stiffness and muscle soreness.
- May enhance flexibility and facilitate an improvement in the length-tension relationships between muscles.
- May decrease the risk of injury.
- Begins the recovery process, preparing the body for the next workout.
