Ways to be ‘Cool’!!

Now that we know the importance of cooling down after any bout of exercise, let’s check out the different ways to cool down effectively.

Simply put there are 2 types of cool down – Active and Passive

The aim of any cool down is-
o To gradually shift the body from activity to rest
o To get the heart rate down to the resting levels, gradually. Any sudden change, as is the case if you abruptly stop the activity that you were performing, can lead to complications
o Restore the normal blood flow to the different parts of the body – since while performing any activity, blood flow in the body is shunted from the inactive parts like the digestive, urinary systems to the active sites. So it is essential to restore the normal blood flow
o To restore the muscle fiber lengths to their original states

Actively cooling down is when you merely reduce the intensity of the activity that you were earlier doing and stop gradually. For example, if your main activity was jogging, and you want to stop, you gradually reduce the intensity of the jog, till you are just walking along and gradually stop.
If you were performing any other activity, you can also walk on the treadmill or elsewhere for 5-10 minutes and gradually stop.

Passively cooling down is when you do active or passive stretches towards the end of the workout. This is the most common form of cooling down. The stretches are usually for all the leg muscles (hamstrings, quadriceps, calves etc.), lower back muscles, upper back muscles and neck muscles apart from the active muscle that was worked upon.
Stretching works on the muscle fibers and also helps ease blood flow to the targeted body part.

Hence you will see that, a combination of active and passive stretches will give you the best results. Active cool down gets the blood flowing to all parts of the body and the stretches will work on the individual muscle level to give you a total cool and refreshed feeling!! A complete cool down process should last atleast 5 minutes and each stretch should be held for atleast 20-30 seconds for maximum benefit.

Cooling You Down

Woke up late in the morning – but don’t want to miss the morning Gym session! So? You decide to hit the weights directly, just skip the warm up and cool down – they are just a waste of time!! Do, I sound familiar?

Many of us consistently skip the cool down whenever we are in a hurry. Unfortunately, the negative results are not immediate but in fact they manifest themselves weeks or months later in the form of aches, shortened muscles, strains, muscle pulls and other postural problems.

Incase of any activity, be it a cardio activity like walking on the treadmill or a resistance-training routine, there are continuous muscle contractions that take place. The muscle fibres in a muscle are the ones that cause the contraction. When the activity is stopped, due to the repetitive nature of all activities, the muscle fibres are still in contraction, and have not returned to their original resting lengths.
Over a period of time, these fibres adjust themselves to the new shortened length causing the muscles to shorten.

Our musculo-skeletal system can be best represented by a camping tent – with one pole in between (skeletal bones and spinal column) and strings on all sides (muscles). So the moment one string tightens up, the pole starts leaning towards it. To compensate this and restore balance, you have to pull and tighten the strings on the opposite side – which means increase the tension in that string!

Thus you can see that the muscles get imbalanced and can even spoil the posture. The intermediate effects of this consequent tension in some muscles can lead to aches, referred pains, muscle pulls, strains etc. For example, if your calf muscles are tight, especially in case you jog, then this can cause a pain in the shoulder muscles and back - neck muscles, as a referred pain!
Moreover, as we have covered earlier, during a cardio activity, majority of the blood supply is diverted to the leg and active muscles. So, when the activity is suddenly stopped, due to gravity, all the blood pools in the leg thus causing temporary reduced blood flow to brain which may lead to dizziness, nausea, fainting.
Hence, it is very essential to reduce the intensity of the activity gradually and then stop,