Cool Down Exercises
Most people know the importance of warm up exercises before workout. Why do people do warm-ups? Warm-ups help do what their name says, they warm up the body. If you do not warm up your body and go straight to the hardcore workout, then there is a chance that you will end up injuring your muscles. Hence, we can see that warm-ups are very important.
Relaxing After a Workout
There are several benefits to doing cool down exercises. Firstly, when you exercise, the level of adrenaline in the blood shoots up. Hence, you need to do some activity to reduce the amount of adrenaline in the blood. Secondly, when we exercise, the body experiences a heightened activity rate, especially in the heart. The heart pumps more blood in and out of the muscles. But when the activity stops, there is no longer any pump to take the blood back to the heart. This leads to 'blood pooling' in the muscles. There is also an accumulation of lactic acid, a waste matter in the blood, along with blood pooling. And third, research also says that people who do not perform muscle relaxing exercises after a workout, stand greater chances of facing the problems of Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness (DOMS) or Post Exercise Muscle Soreness. This means that the muscles that were worked out but not cooled down will starting hurting after a few hours.
Best Muscle Relaxing Exercises
Reduce the Speed
If you are doing cardiovascular exercises, then the simplest form of cooling down is to reduce the speed of your workout. Suppose you are running on a treadmill. Then you can gradually decrease the speed of the treadmill. You can do this for any cardiovascular workout for that matter, whether it is cycling, hiking, swimming etc. For the last 3-5 minutes of your workout, you should successively reduce the intensity of the exercise so that your body gets into the pre-workout stage.
Reduce the Intensity
If you are performing a heavy workout, you can reduce the amount of weight you take on the last set. If you do a 4 set workout, make sure that you use the fourth set to cool down, by lifting a lesser weight. This will gradually ease the body into the state it was in before you started the exercise.
Stretching
Stretching is crucial to avoid the delayed onset of muscle soreness. Some people work out all their muscles in one day, while others work out one muscle at a time. Either way, it is important that you give the muscle that you worked out a good long stretch for around 15-20 seconds. If you exercise all the muscles in one day, then you will have to stretch all the main muscle groups at the end of your workout.
As you can see, these exercises are very important and very simple as well. So at the end of your exercise program, devote around 5-7 minutes for cooling down your body.
