As I said before, your warm up needs to be “the heat”, well likewise, your warm-down needs to be the “cool” thing to do. Both play a vital role in one’s training. You need to do a cool-down after your training session or event not because it’s the “cool thing” to do and because ‘everyone is doing it’, but to benefit yourself and your performance.One’s cool-down should involve a short bout (5-10 minutes) of low intensity exercise, followed by a session of static stretching. The athlete will start his/her cool-down with the low intensity exercise, to reduce the muscular and body temperature, to bring one’s heart rate back to normal (by decreasing it) and to promote the removal of waste products. It is in the cool-down that static stretching is most effective. Static stretching will restore one’s normal range of motion, as opposed to dynamic stretching which will go beyond normal range of motion, it will help relax the muscle and re-establish homeostasis within the muscle.
An effective cool-down will hold many physiological benefits, one of which is the removal of waste products such as lactic acid which has built up during activity. The low intensity activity will decrease the chance of dizziness and so forth as there is no sudden halt in activity, it makes the close down of activity more gradual which prevents the pooling of blood in the extremities. This part of a training session is also vital in reducing the chance of DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness).
So it is important to do both and effective warm-up as well as a v
aluable cool-down.-Caron-Lee
Caz, for our pre-season games during rugby we playing 'chukka's of 20 minutes. How would you go by a warm up and cool down if say you play two 20 minute chukka's and then have a break for 20 minutes, followed by another two sessions of 20 minute chukka's?
ReplyDeletehey caron, would there be anything wrong with doing a dynamic stretch after an intense running or gyming session or is static the way to go:-)?
ReplyDeleteis running a lap around the field sufficient, as well as stretching after excercising?
ReplyDeleteHey Gav, thanks for your question, with regards to the chukkas, the twenty minute break is long enough to do a short cool down as you come off and then do another warm up before you go back on, twenty minutes will allow you to do that.
ReplyDeleteBlake like I said before there is a lot of different research with regards to what stretching to do and when, but most of the research leans to you doing static stretching as a cool down, due to the physiological benefits that type of stretching gives.
Hi Kirsten, depending on how long the lap is and how intense the work out or session you have just completed is, if it was a moderate session a lap and full stretch session should be sufficient.