Workout Essentials: Warming Up, Stretching, and Cooling Down

1. The warm-up

In the warm-up phase, you're revving yourself up, anticipating the exhilarating feeling you'll get when you're in the intensity phase of your exercise routine.

Warming up involves stretching your muscles—crucial to helping your body adapt to the demands of exercise. It increases blood flow to the muscles. Jumping into a workout without preparing your body and your muscles can lead to muscle strain and soreness, and possibly even injury.

Active stretching is geared for the warm-up phase. The idea is that you will be warming up all the major muscles, joints, and ligaments in your body in preparation for the exercise you are about to do. Listen to your body. For each of the warm-ups described below, you will be following your body's natural range of motion. For the first few repetitions of the movement, your natural range of motion will be smaller. As your body parts warm up, the range will be bigger. It is also important to understand that active stretching is continuous, fluid motion with no stopping until you are moving on to the next stretch. The following warm-up movements will raise your heart rate so you are preparing for both cardiovascular and strength workouts.

These movements will take the blood away from your stomach and bring it more to the surface of your skin.

2. A stretching lesson from cats

Many people seem to have forgotten that we're actually designed to be flexible. Flexibility improves with prolonged and careful stretching of the muscles, joints, fascia, and other connective tissues. That's why ballet dancers with training can place their leg on a ballet barre with ease.

We can learn by observing one of the most flexible animals—cats. If you watch cats, you'll see that they stretch all the time.

Have you ever seen a cat extend its paw up in the air and then turn it around? Try that—extend your arm and turn your palm up to the sky. You'll feel your forearm, shoulder, biceps, and triceps stretching, just from this simple action.

You've seen how cats arch their backs and put their head up in the air. That's actually fantastic for your back. In fact, it's a very well-known yoga pose called, not surprisingly, the Cat. Kneeling on hands and knees, curl your head toward your chest and round your back upward, then reverse by raising your head and sticking your butt up toward the sky. The Cat stretch helps your vertebrae and back muscles relax.

Here is a simple stretch for your shoulders and chest. Stand in a doorway and put your hands on each side of the doorway at shoulder height. Gently lean forward with your chest so that your arms are behind your chest and you are stretching your chest open. In our everyday activities we often spend a lot of time sitting at a computer or driving, and we're always bent forward, closing in our chest. The doorway exercise counterbalances this by opening up the chest.

Here is another easy stretch you can do: From a seated position, twirl your foot around in a slow, deliberate circle. This will stretch your foot and ankle muscles, and you'll also feel it in your calf muscles and even in your thighs. Now rotate in the opposite direction.

Doing some simple stretching activities at brief intervals during the day will help you maintain flexibility and gain relaxation. Try it in your car at a red light, during TV commercials, in meetings, or on the phone. Multitask in a good way!

Consider adding a purposeful ten to twenty minutes of stretching two or three times a week and use it as preparation for actual exercise. Cool-down stretching relaxes you so that you can get on with your day after your exercise period. A good way to experience the power of stretching is in a group exercise class such as BodyFlow, yoga, or tai chi.

Take a lesson from cats and stretch. It's said they have nine lives—maybe stretching adds one!

3. The cool-down

Taking the time to cool down transitions your heart, lungs, and blood flow back toward a normal rate (i.e., non-exercising state). For example, you warmed up by stretching all the major parts of your body and by starting your walk slowly; then you did your brisk walk/jog for twenty to thirty minutes. Now you will finish off by cooling down. Particularly if you had an intense workout where you have kept your heart rate up, you will want to walk slowly for at least a few minutes—on a treadmill or outside, wherever you are. If you are de-conditioned (perhaps you haven't exercised in a while) or have higher than normal blood pressure, then this return to a slow walk for a few minutes is especially important before you sit down or lower your head. You can finish off with a few static stretches, if you want. Fitness clubs usually have a stretching area complete with diagrams. By investing a few minutes here, you will not have any soreness the next day! Or go to the GoodLife website, goodlifefitness.com, for more information on stretching.

Most injuries or muscle stiffness or soreness are the result of neglecting to warm up and cool down. I like to think of warm-ups and cool-downs as my own internal "coaches." You're switching your brain to active mode while also allowing it to relax and recover. It's an opportunity to check in with your body, see how it's feeling, and decide how hard you can push yourself today.

In the cool-down phase, you get to savor the feelings of well-being that permeate the body after exercise, to experience the effects of those wonderful endorphins, and to congratulate yourself on exercise well done. You can have confidence that you'll be invigorated, mentally rested, and will get more done faster. It's rejuvenating!

One of the best places to get used to good stretching and warming-up and cooling down techniques is a group exercise class. It's pretty hard to get the same instruction from a diagram or chart. Many fitness clubs offer free introductory passes on their websites, which is a great place to start.