Cooling Down After an Exercise Allows the Oxygen to Continue to Move Through Your Body

A cool down is an important element of a workout, allowing your body to bring down your heart rate and relax your muscles from working out in a tensed state. As the last part of your exercise routine, the cooldown does not need to take up a long period of time—five to 10 minutes is all you need to reduce heavy breathing and mitigate challenging recovery issues.

To receive the maximum number of benefits in a workout session, the cooldown process is a necessary part and vital to your safety—skipping it can put you at risk for injury.

What Is a Cooldown?

After finishing your workout, your heart beats fast, your body temperature is high, and your blood vessels are constricted. Cooling down allows your body to slow itself down by bringing your heart rate and body temperature back to normal. Stretching is also helpful during a cooldown because your muscles are warm, allowing you to stretcher farther and help your muscles from becoming stiff and cramped.

Benefits of Cooldowns

The cooldown offers a number of benefits to your health, helping you recover faster from your workout. Here are a few of the peer-reviewed, researched benefits:

Recovering pH Resting Levels

An active cooldown that includes walking and deep breathing can lead to a better recovery of pH resting levels. Bringing your pH to a resting level can help prevent alkalosis, which is a condition of imbalanced fluids and blood. Alkalosis can lead to digestive issues people sometimes face after a workout: vomiting, electrolyte imbalances, dehydration, muscle twitching, fatigue, and cramps.

Promoting Heart Rate Slow Down

Bringing your heart rate down is essential to keep your blood from pooling, which can occur if you decrease blood immediately to your lower extremities (for example, you go for a run and immediately stop). This can theoretically prevent an increase in pressure of arterial carbon dioxide. Lowering your heart rate also can increase blood flow to the brain.

Avoiding Injuries

Completing a workout immediately rather than slowly allowing your body to adjust back to rest can lead to sudden accidents, injuries, and potentially a loss of consciousness because the blood is not properly flowing to your brain and limbs.

Risks of Not Doing a Cooldown

Skipping a cooldown after a workout can cause vulnerable people any number of the following symptoms:

• Lightheadness
• Tunnel vision
• Blurred vision
• Vomiting
  
• Dizziness
• Blood pooling in the limbs
• Lost consciousness, in extreme circumstances
  

If these symptoms continue, be sure to seek immediate help from a medical professional.

How to Do a Proper Cooldown

After you finish your workout, spending five to 10 minutes performing an effective cooldown can relax and lengthen muscles. Harvard Health recommends flowing from one stretch to the next without rests in between, making your cooldown more active.

The American Heart Association offers the following cooldown regime:

1. Start with walking for about five minutes and get your heart rate below 120 beats per minute.
2. Your heartrate should continue to drop as you continue to cooldown.
3. Move on to stretching. Hold each stretch for 30 seconds.
4. If you do feel like you need more, stretch the other side and return to the first side for additional sets. Each stretch should not be painful and be sure not bounce.
5. Exhale as you stretch and inhale when holding the stretch.
   

Potential stretches during a cooldown include the following:

Hamstring Stretch

• Sit with your legs out straight.
• Extend your arms and reach forward by bending at the waist as far as you can. Keep your knees straight.
• Hold for 30 seconds.
• Come back to the starting position.
• Repeat three times.

This stretch is helpful if you have done any cardio work or leg resistance training.

Cat-Cow Stretch

• Get on your hands and knees, aligning your wrist under your shoulders and your knees under your hips.
• Align your spine and keep it flat.
• Move your neck so it is looking down and out.
• Curl your toes under.
• Tilt your pelvis back.
• Drop your belly down and draw your navel in.
• Move your neck up toward to the ceiling.
• Release the top of your feet to the floor.
• Tuck in your tailbone and move up your nail.
• Draw your navel toward your spine.
• Drop your head.
• Do this three times.

This stretch can help your back muscles relax and slow down your breathing.

Forward Bend

• Stand up straight and reach your arms overhead.
• Sweep your arms down on both sides of your body into a forward fold from your
  hips.
• Bring your fingertips in line with the toes.
• Press your palms into the floor (if you can reach).
• Bring your weight forward onto the balls of your feet and keep your hips over
  your ankles. Let your head hang.
• Come up by placing your hands on your hips and contact your abs as you slowly
  rise up.

Be sure to come up slowly. If you go too fast, you could get dizzy.

A Word from Verywell

You can improve your recovery by taking five to 10 minutes after your workout to cooldown, even walking for five minutes and holding a few stretches for 30 seconds each will work. This will help you avoid blood pooling, which can potentially cause injuries. A cooldown can also promote relaxation and get your body and mind ready for your next non-physical activity. For any questions about cooling down, be sure to seek out the advice of a medical professional.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What should a cooldown include?

  A cooldown should include five minutes of walking and getting your heartrate below 120 beats per minute. Then you should move onto stretching, holding each stretch for about 30 seconds without bouncing. Be sure to exhale on the stretch and inhale as you hold it. Some stretches to include are the forward standing stretch and basic hamstring stretches.

• What happens if you do not do a cooldown after a workout?

  What happens if you do not cooldown depends on an individual, as everyone is
  different. Some might experience some muscle cramping and twitching, whereas others could have more significant events. These could include dizziness, blood pooling, fatigue, lightheadedness, and vomiting. In a worst-case scenario, people could faint.

• What are the advantages of doing a cooldown?

  Cooling down can help keep the blood flowing to your limbs and brain, bring your heart rate and body temperature down, reduce your sweating, and recover your pH back to resting level. Cooling down can also help prevent digestive issues that are common among people who work out, especially runners.

Verywell Fit uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

1. American Heart Association. Warm Up, Cool Down.

2. Van Hooren B, Peake JM. Do we need a cool-down after exercise? A narrative review of the psychophysiological effects and the effects on performance, injuries and the long-term adaptive response.Sports Med. 2018;48(7):1575-1595.

3. Popp JK, Bellar DM, Hoover DL, Craig BW, Leitzelar BN, Wanless EA, et al. Pre- and post-activity stretching practices of collegiate athletic trainers in the United states. J Strength Cond Res. 2017;31(9):2347–54.

4. Tri-City Medical Center. Why Warming Up and Cooling Down is Important.

5. Van Hooren B, Peake JM. Do we need a cool-down after exercise? A narrative review of the psychophysiological effects and theeffects on performance, injuries and the long-term adaptive response.Sports Med. 2018;48(7):1575-1595.

6. Harvard Health. Exercise 101: Don't skip the warm-up or cool-down.

By Malia Frey
Malia Frey is a weight loss expert, certified health coach, weight management specialist, personal trainer​, and fitness nutrition specialist.

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Source: https://www.verywellfit.com/what-is-a-cool-down-3495457

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