The Best Ways to Cool Down After a Workout
By Sara Butler
A fitness routine is essential to your continued health and wellness, but if you're not taking some time to focus on recovery as a part of your routine, then you're doing it wrong! Recovery is essential if you want to feel your best. But what is the best cooldown strategy? Here are a few easy ways you can add an effective cooldown to your workout.
Why a Cooldown is Important
No matter the method you use to cool down, sticking with it has a lot of benefits. It helps to relax your muscles, keep you flexible, and helps to muscles to repair and strengthen. It also helps to keep injury at bay, something that's vital to keeping you healthy as you get your body fit.
Stretching
Stretching is a classic cooldown strategy because it works! It improves your flexibility and mobility. Dynamic stretching is used to specifically target warm muscles and should include movements such as squatting, rolling, and crawling alongside low-intensity dynamic movements such as jogging, twisting, and high knees.
Stretching is useful any time after you finish your main workout and can be used before a workout to warm up your body and get it ready for movement.
Foam Rolling
Foam rolling works to get rid of tension in muscles after a workout. It's a sort of self-massage to help improve your flexibility and help your muscles to recover from a tough workout. It also can help you not to feel so sore after a workout, helping you to keep injuries from creeping up on you.
Foam rolling can really be done at any time, as both a warm up and a cool down. Though most people like to do it as a part of their cool down simply because it feels good.
How to Do It Right
You should take three to five minutes to cool down at a lower intensity after your main workout. Then, do five minutes of stretching and rolling, concentrating on the muscle groups that were pushed hardest during your workout.
If you have concerns about how to cool down after a workout, then speak to the chiropractors at The Joint Chiropractic today. They can assist give you suggestions about the best way to cool down and give you suggestions to make it more effective, too!
To learn more about your health, wellness, and fitness, see your local chiropractor at The Joint Chiropractic in Greenwood Village, Colo.