If your workout is my warm up, then my cool down is your……no wait, your cool down is my…… wait is there a saying for that?
Well, whether there’s a saying for it or not, the cool down is an important part of a complete workout.
Why perform a cool down, I’m glad you asked. But before we get into that watch this video:
Here’s the back story: Barney bet his friends that he couldn’t finish the NYC marathon. And to their surprise, he did. As soon as the marathon was over, he got on the subway to go home. Once he reached his stop, he, obviously, couldn’t get up. So what happened to Barney?
Let’s start at the beginning:
You perform a warm up as a warning to your body that work was about to be done. Your body then transitions all it’s resources to getting the job done. It starts pushing blood to the working muscles as it sends hormones out to help with the work.
THEN YOU HULK SMASH!!!!![Cool Down]()
Now that you’ve finished crushing your workout, all that blood is still in the muscles and the hormones are pumping, we need to tell the body that we are about to go back to rest. If not, as in the case with Barney, the blood stayed in his legs, pooled, and then got so heavy, he couldn’t use them. While this is an extreme case, and a funny one at that, the truth is, you need to help your body return to it’s resting state.
Cool Down Ideas:
Our Cool down is going to bridge the gap from our hard work to our rest, so keep in mind that all of these suggestions should be performed around at a moderate to easy pace so that the heart rate can begin to slow down, not stay elevated.
1. 5 minute jog/ any piece of cardio equipment- While not complicated to jog for 5 minutes is easy math. If your heart rate got to 90% of it’s Max during exercise, perform a jog a 70% to help slow it down post training
2. Dynamic Warm er….Cool Down- Yup, that’s right. Perform your dynamic warm up as a cool down. It’s the perfect bridge to rest and it incorporates a ton of full range of motion exercises, while not taxing the body too hard
3. Yoga or stretching- There are a ton of benefits to taking the body through a full range of motion and post exercise flexibility training is a great way to get it done.
There really are no bad ideas when it comes to the cool down, really the only mistake you can make is not doing one.
If you’re looking for more cool down ideas, you can check out my Dynamic Athlete Program on the Train Heroic website.
The post Why it’s Important to Cool Down appeared first on TrainHeroic.