Introduction
In this article, we are going to talk about warming up, cooling down and how stretching comes into play. Stretching is something when you want to extend your body to its full capacity. It has a several benefits on our body both physically and mentally. Stretching, when performed, it releases a hormone in our brain called dopamine which is a happy hormone, it relaxes your mind and overall you feel very relaxed, charm and calm.
Before you proceed, check out for our latest article on Best Yoga Poses for Weight Loss
Stretching in Physiological Stress
Exercise is a physiological stress. We can think about our normal baseline, heart rate, breathing rate, temperature. Every organ of our body is on high extreme work load during exercise. As we exercise we have a greater demand for these factors and so we can kind of think about this as a bit of a bell curve, our intensity being right at the top of that bell curve and the warming up gradually allowing us to get to the intensity and cooling down allowing us to get back to our baseline. So let’s take you on a little bit of a journey.
The Sequence of Performance
When you are trying to exercise your muscles are moving and in order for your muscles to perform they need oxygen. In order for us to get oxygen your heart rate needs to pump and in order for us to meet the demand for that oxygen your breathing rate goes up. Now not only that, but as we exercise we are going to have changes to our metabolic rate. We need glycogen stores in order to generate energy for muscles so as you exercise, your hormones will adjust in order for us to respond to that physiological demand.
Advantages of Physiological and Psychological Needs
There is a question that why does warming up and cooling down benefit us and how do we do it? In order to answer that, there are two differences here, so we have got physiological benefits, but we have also got psychological benefits.
Physiological Benefits
So as you warm up, your body temperature is going to rise. Now this is quite important because a warm muscle is a more productive muscle. The reason to this is because it is able to intake some more oxygen, we are able to work across our full range of motion and we actually get a lot of contractile function benefits from this. The gradual introduction into a physiological stress state. Your exercise is quite important by gradually building up heart rate. Actually, we are able to divert more oxygen to our muscles and these are the structures that are in demand. Now do you think that is going to help you in your workout, That is why I also mentioned psychological impact. If you want to check how sleep may help in recovery of the muscles and also play an important part in psychological impact then you can also check out our latest article on Importance of rest and recovery in fitness.
Psychological Benefits
- If we are talking about your mental preparation, you being aware of what your body is doing and your state of mind as you are exercising. Preparing for exercise is actually really beneficial in helping us to manage stress. But more importantly on neurological connections, we are sure you have heard about that there is a connection between mind and muscles, when we perform our warm up, we are actually helping to stimulate those neurological connections between mind and muscle. Now let’s elaborate more on this. A strong connection is going to allow us to have a greater output from those muscles when we are at our peak point of our training. There is a lot of talk about how warmups can help prevent injury.
- Now the scientific evidence is slightly varied. But if your body’s warm, if your muscles are warm, and if your mind is in that ready state, you are going to have a positive impact on prevention of injury. When we are talking about warm-ups, stretching comes into play and there is again a lot of different talk about dynamic stretching.
Static Stretches and Dynamic Stretches
Static stretching and Dynamic stretches directly are another concept that are related to all of those physiological parameters that we spoke about before like the increase in heart rate etc. Static stretching is something if you hold any position for about few moments and hold it still. Whereas dynamic stretching includes movements while performing stretching of your arms, legs, head, shoulders belly or thighs.
However, as you are performing these movements, you are also increasing the length of that muscle across its full range of movement. In that case, you should like to do specific warmup. So for example, if anyone is going into the gym and is doing a deadlift session, the best warmup should be deadlifts. But the difference is that you should not going to start off on my max weight.
You should be going to gradually build up lower weights, nice and controlled reps. You will to try to build up that muscle mind connection that we mentioned earlier.
Mobility Exercises
Another thing that we will like to add in this exercise is mobility exercises. So stretching a mobility to key terms. When we are talking about warm-ups stretching is referring to flexibility, so the length of that muscle, whereas mobility, we are talking about joint range of motion. We honestly absolutely like to build in mobility into our warm-ups. Mobility excercise often includes running and jogging. But there are some foods and snacks that are necessary before jogging or running. You can check our latest article on Healthy snacks to fuel your workout before proceeding further. Moving on, benefits of mobility is increasing muscle activation across our full joint range. And then cool downs. So when we talk about cool downs, we are talking about relaxation and repair. Cool downs can be both active or passive, but we will cover up active cool downs here.
Active Cool Downs
- A passive static stretch can be quite beneficial here. The reason being is, we are trying to maintain muscle length. Active cool downs are things like maybe walking on a treadmill after you have finished training. We are just gradually bringing that heart rate down, but you are still moving your muscles now. There are actually some scientific benefits to it, active cool downs have actually been shown to accelerate removal of lactose from the blood, although this is not actually directly from the muscle tissue itself.
Performing active cool downs may partially prevent immune system depression while also promoting recovery of your cardiovascular system. - In actual fact, the process of an active cool down has shown to maintain endorphin levels actually helping you give that feeling of joy. So to sum up for everybody warm-ups and cool downs quite important, offering us physiological and psychological benefits.
Conclusion
Gradually get into that challenging peak of exercise should be a gradual process, aim to increase mobility. Try to remember those dynamic stretches and the importance of those in your warmup. Remember that warm-ups can be general or they can be specific. Remember, when you are doing your exercise, think about those connections, develop those neural pathways that you will be using at a higher intensity within your program. Do not forget to stay hydrated during excercise. Check our latest article on Importance of Hydration for workout. And when we talk about cool downs, you are wanting to gradually return to baseline. Keep those endorphin levels high. And the other thing about your cool down is it gives you a chance to reflect on your workout. What have you achieved? What can you do better? How can you prepare yourself for next time?
FAQs
Thank you for joining us. If you have any questions, please drop them in the comments and before you go, also check our other articles related to health and fitness. Share the knowledge with your loved ones and stay healthy.
