Cool Down – why bother?
The main aim of a cool down session is to promote recovery and return the body to a pre exercise level. This is important because, during the process of exercise, your body goes through a number of stressful processes – even if your exercise regime isn’t particularly stressful. The definition of exercise, after all, is to progressively stress the body to develop its muscular strength, cardiovascular fitness and stamina and this means that during exercise muscle fibres, tendons and ligaments get damaged, and waste products build up within your body, which will later form lactic acid which can cause cramp.
To assist your body in its repair process you need to work through a cool down, especially to help with post exercise muscle soreness – the aches and pains that we often experience the day after a tough work out. Equally, when exercising, your heart pumps large amounts of blood to the working muscles. This blood carries oxygen and nutrients that working muscles need. When the exercise stops this blood, as well as waste products like lactic acid, will remain in the muscles, which can cause swelling and pain. The cool down helps us cope with all this by keeping the blood circulating, albeit more gently, which in turn helps to prevent blood pooling and also removes waste products from the muscles. This slower circulating blood also brings with it the oxygen and nutrients needed by the muscles, tendons and ligaments for repair.
Finally, cool down allows the muscles to stretch themselves out again after the contraction of effort, so that they don’t remain tensed and shortened, so we get an extra benefit from our cool down, we end up taller, with better posture and smoother, longer muscles
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