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Cooling Down
An active cool-down refers to easy physical activity at the end of your workout—just in the opposite order of the warm-up. This is in contrast to passive recovery, which means you suddenly stop your workout and sit or lie down to rest, like my friend George who, when asked how he cooled down, said he would sit down on his front lawn with a beer.
Worse is the idea that you should sprint the last several hundred yards of your run. This is a recipe for disaster because, even though your muscles are warmed up, you now put them back in high gear with more stress, requiring even more of a cool-down.
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The most important reason for a cool-down is that it begins a key process of recovery from the workout. The cool-down slowly allows the heart rate to descend. While you will not reach your starting or resting heart rate, you may come within ten or twenty beats of it. Let’s use the same example of the athlete above who began the workout with a heart rate of 60 beats per minute and ascended to 140. Fifteen minutes before the end of the workout, the heart rate is gradually reduced by slowing down, until it approaches 60 beats per minute (although a proper cool-down may bring you back to 70-80).
This slow descent in intensity, monitored by the heart rate, prevents physical and chemical stress, especially within the cardiovascular system and the muscles. It helps oxygenation and circulation in the muscles and helps remove blood lactate (even during an aerobic workout). These are all vital parts of the process of recovery.
Question: I understand the advantages of warming up by walking to elevate the heart rate steadily. I’ve seen that starting to run too soon without my body being properly warmed causes a spike in my heart rate of maybe thirty to forty beats. Typically, when this occurs I resume walking and start running when a little warmer. Anyway, a few weeks ago, when the outside air temperature was about 65°F, twelve minutes was sufficient warm-up time before breaking into a jog. A week later the temperature dropped to 50°F, and this time I had to walk twenty minutes before I could start running without my heart rate spiking. This weekend the temperature dropped again to 40°F. This time, it took thirty minutes to warm up before I could start running. The difficulty is that when air temperatures are low, it’s hard to warm up when suitably clothed for running. As you know, running attire is typically lightweight and designed for easy movements. If I were to keep warm by wearing additional clothing, this would make running very uncomfortable. Interestingly, I’m finding it’s much easier to control my heart rate in the second hour of a run when my body is very warm. Do you have any tips for dealing with this issue? Is there a way to warm the body quickly? I’ve toyed with the idea of riding an exercise bike indoors before setting off on a run but the problem here is that the warm-up and run would be separated by fifteen minutes in a car.
Answer: Your idea of riding an indoor bike is perfect, and one I often recommend. Once you warm up indoors, the warm-up effect will last much more than the fifteen minutes it takes you to start running. Any indoor warm-up would work, such as a small trampoline, stationary bike, or other way to perform an active, aerobic warm-up. Also, warming up indoors on a cold day will keep you from needing too many layers of clothing during your workout. This is normally okay as you want to avoid getting too cold or chilled, but as you warm up further, it’s important to remove the excess clothing to avoid overheating—a potential stress. Overheating can impair the physiological function of certain fat stores, reducing fat burning. In addition, overheating during longer workouts can increase the risk of dehydration and raise your body temperature too much. So if you wear layers, remove each one as you get warmer.
For most situations, cooling down even in cold weather is more practical. In some situations where it’s difficult to perform a good, active cool-down, you can do the same as your warm-up, just in reverse. But in this case, consider a shorter cool-down outside, then get home to complete your cool-down indoors.
For most workouts, spend about fifteen minutes cooling down, and, for longer workouts, such as those of two, three, or more hours, increase this time to at least twenty to thirty minutes.
The warm-up and cool-down are really whole-body workouts. As such, you need not be restricted: you can warm up using a different activity from your main workout. For example, you can ride a stationary bike for fifteen minutes to warm up, then go for your one-hour run. You can even cool down by doing something different, like say, swimming. This is helpful during certain periods of bad-weather stress. On a cold winter morning, training can start with an indoor warm-up before going out to run in the cold. If your indoor tennis session begins and ends with an easy jog, you’ll accomplish a proper warm-up and cool-down.
The time spent warming up and cooling down should be included as part of your total workout—it is a very important portion. So, if you plan on doing a “one-hour aerobic run,” spend fifteen minutes warming up, fifteen cooling down, and a half hour in your aerobic training zone.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that because you don’t feel like you’re getting much of a workout that the warm-up and cool-down don’t count as part of it. Tremendous health benefits are obtained through these aspects of your training. A lack of warming up and cooling down can even contribute to overtraining. Nagging injuries sometimes disappear when a long enough warm-up precedes the workout. And, competition can improve when the body is properly warmed.
