Exercises to Help You Cool Down After a Workout

As more people are becoming active and going to the gym, the need for an after workout exercise is high. After you finish your workout routine, you should engage in lighter exercises for about 15 minutes to ensure you are gradually stopping the workout and not harming your body. If you do not do cool-down exercises after you have finished a workout, you might be setting yourself up for a possible injury or very sore muscle. If you do not know what types of exercises to do after your workout, here are some suggestions.

If you have come to the end of your workout and you were on a treadmill, a very easy cool-down exercise is to slow the run to a walk. By slowing your run down to a walk for about ten minutes you are giving yourself time to adjust to not being so active anymore and can help alleviate soreness after the workout. Simply spending ten minutes after you completed your run on a lighter walking exercise will reduce the cramps in your muscles and will help your body naturally calm down.

If you are on a treadmill you can also go to another machine to do some cool down exercises. If you do not want to continue the treadmill you can just go over to the bicycle and do a light routine on it. You do not have to stay on the treadmill after your running workout you can go to any machine you would like that works the same muscle groups and do a simple ten minute routine.

If you were running, you might want to think about slowing the run to jog, continue with a speed walk and then finish with a normal walk. You do not want to go from running hard to walking slow, because you can still get soreness and muscle cramps. When you run you want to slow down gradually until you reach walking in a normal fashion, spending about five minutes on each of the cool-down phases.

If you are a swimmer, you might want to think about doing exercises that are for the shoulder, groin and back which are the most worked areas in a swimming workout. You might want to do simple back stretches where you bend from one side of your body to the other and also exercises where you twist your body to stretch out the core muscles in your back.

Cooling your body down can also be simple exercises like stretching your legs out and bending down to touch your toes or doing the butterfly exercises with your legs. You want to focus your exercises on the muscle groups you just worked in your exercise whether it be your back, arms, or legs. You can also do simple yoga poses if you like doing that instead, which focus a lot on stretching and keeping your muscles loose.

The most important part of a cool-down after a workout is to give your body time to adjust to being back in the non-workout state. When you workout, you create more blood that flows through your body and if you do not cool-down then the blood just stays cycling through your body when it is not needed. By allowing yourself time after your workout to gradually decrease your physical activity, you are allowing your blood to flow normally through your body, which will help decrease soreness and cramping in your muscle. Take time to do some arm circles or jumping jacks, something that is simple and light but yet enough to gradually put you back in normal range.