You must not stop immediately after a tough workout because it may make you feel nauseous. So when you run at a high speed, your leg muscles pump blood through your body and if you end immediately, the blood remain in your legs and your heart has to pick up the slack. At the last stage of your running fast, your heart might not be capable of pumping more blood, so sufficient blood does not reaches the brain and you end up with comatose. You must have to cool down after a tough workout because when you slow down little by little, you give time to your heart to pump harder to recover the loss of pumping by your legs. Cooling down after workouts helps you to prevent from muscle injury, inflexibility and discomfort.
Cooling down is same as warming up. Cooling down and warming up are the most important parts of exercise schedules. After you have completed your workout, you must continue your activity or walk for at least ten minutes at a low intensity. The temperature of your muscles reduces, and makes the skin feel cool, the heart rate goes down and at the same time the perspiration rate also goes down.
In order to attain all round fitness, you must stretch and relax after every workout. Putting an end, suddenly to your workouts, reduces your blood pressure, which is not safe, especially for the older women. Cooling down also gives you an opportunity to stretch your muscles. At this time, the warm muscles are likely to become short in length compared to the size when they were before the activity. If you do not stretch after you have started your workout, the ultimate result would be shortening of muscle fibers in the future. And then you may feel stiffness, soreness and injury because of inflexibility. Just like swimmers concentrate on the groin, shoulders and back. Cooling down also allows you to get pleasure in the sense of mental and physical peace that follow a workout.
As the workouts are performed, the heart rate tends to increase, the muscles build up tension, and waste products like carbon dioxide and lactic acid are formed. When you stop a tough exercise, the heart takes time to adjust with your new speed. Moving the arms and the legs helps to return blood to the heart. This maintains the circulation of blood to release extra carbon dioxide and other waste products out of the muscles. Eliminating waste products such as lactic acid is significant as it helps to lessen soreness of the muscles.
These are the steps you can use while cooling down -
1. Just try to relax, breathe, think and concentrate on your feeling.
2. Rehydrate: Drinking water is essential to help in preserving hydration.
3. Stretches: Cooling down stretches must be slow and steady. Hold every stretch for about thirty seconds.
4. Take large steps that help to stretch your leg muscles and keep your feet on the floor for longer period to make your calf muscles stretch.
