Warming up and cooling down is important in an exercise or workout programme. A person should do a warm-up before a workout and cool down after a workout. People do more harm to their bodies without doing warm-up and cool down. You can spend 10 min to warming up and 10min to cooling down.
Warm-up activities include light jogging, cycling slowly on a bike etc.
You can do cooling down by reducing the intensity of your workout. ex: if you are jogging reduce your pace to a brisk walk for the last 10 min.
Warming up is important because,
Prepares your cardiovascular system for physical activity
Increasing blood flow to your muscle
Raising the temperature of your body
Lower the risk of getting injured
Minimize muscle soreness
Cooling down is important because,
Gradually bring your heart rate and blood pressure to it’s normal (level before exercise )
Regulate blood flow
Benefits of warming up
Improve performance
It also improves your sports performance as well as exercise performance
Increase blood flow
Warming up for 10 min within an easy-going activity improves blood flow to your skeletal muscles and opens up blood capillaries. Because of the blood increase the oxygen needed for muscles to function also increase.
Increase oxygen efficiency
When you do warm-up exercises, oxygen is released from your blood more readily and at higher temperatures. During an exercise, your muscles demand a higher level of oxygen. So it’s important to make this oxygen more available through a warm-up activity.
Faster muscle contraction or relaxation
Warming up raises your body temperature that improves your nerve transmission and muscle metabolism. Because of that, your muscles will perform faster and efficiently.
Injury prevention
Warming up prevents injuries by loosening your joints and improving blood to your muscles. So that makes your muscles less likely to tear, twist in a harmful way during workout or sport. Stretching also helps to prepare for the physical activity you perform.
Mental preparation
The side benefit of warming up is that your brain will be focused on your body and your physical activity.
Benefits of cooling down
Recovery
After intense exercise lactic acid builds up within your body. It takes some time to clear it out. Cooling down helps to remove and release that lactic acid and helps to speed up your recovery.
Reducing DOMS(delayed onset muscle soreness)
While muscle soreness is to be expected after exercise, a significant amount of DOMS is very uncomfortable, and prevent you from exercising in the future. Cooling down reduces that muscle soreness keeps you comfortable.
What happens if you don’t properly warm-up or cool down?
Increase the risk of injury
Over 30% of the injuries seen in sports are skeletal muscle injuries. These injuries can be easily prevented by warming up and stretching.
Blood pooling
If you stop exercises abruptly without cooling down, your muscles will suddenly stop contracting vigorously. This cause blood to pool in the lower extremities of your body, because of that the blood pumped back to the heart and brain goes down. As a result, you may feel dizziness and light-headed, and you may even faint.
Increased stress on the cardiovascular system
If you start exercising as a strenuous level without warming up first you will place unnecessary stress on your heart and lungs.
Anne Saparamadu
References
https://www.tricitymed.org/2016/12/warming-cooling-important/
