Cool Down

The post-workout cool down is just as important as the pre-workout warm up, but many of us skip it — especially if we are short on time. Read the following five things and hopefully they will inspire you to make the time.

1. Cool down by walking or jogging for five to ten minutes. This slowing down helps to cool your body temperature and allows the body to remove the waste products from muscles that were worked.
2. Stretching is an essential component of the cool down. Not only does stretching muscles post workout help increase the range of motion of your joints, but it also continues the cooling down of your hot body.
3. The cool down helps prevent delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), the nemesis of fitness freaks. Post-workout pain often discourages fitness newbies and they lose their drive. So if you are new to the fitness world, don't cut your cool down short.
4. Cooling down decreases your chances of fainting in the locker room. Abruptly ending a cardio workout can cause blood to pool in your extremities leaving you dizzy and light headed or causing you to faint. It also helps your heart rate gradually return to normal.
5. A cool down helps you end on a calm note by decreasing the adrenaline in your blood stream.

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I have always been a little confused about exercise times. I do cardio for a total of 30 minutes, but 10 minutes of that is warm up and cool down. Should I actually do a total of 40 minutes - 10 minute warm up and cool down with 30 minutes vigorous activity - to achieve benefits? In other words, are recommended exercise times inclusive of warm up and cool down?
- Confused Carol

I'm glad you've asked this question because I actually always wondered about this for years before I figured it out too! The new fitness guidelines state that: All healthy adults ages 18 to 65 years need moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity for at least 30 minutes on five days each week or vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity for at least 20 minutes on three days each week.

This means that five days a week your target heart rate should be 50 to 70% of your maximum heart rate (220-age=maximum heart rate) for at least 30 minutes. Or that three days a week your target heart rate should be 70 to 85% your maximum heart rate for at least 20 minutes. This is not inclusive of warm up and cool down, so you have it exactly right when you say you should increase your workout to 40 minutes. In 40 minutes you can do a 5 min warm-up, a 30 min cardio session (where your heart rate is at 50-70% of your max) and a 5 min cool down.

A heart rate monitor is a great way to keep track of your heart rate and as coincidence has it, I'm giving one away for free! You could win your very own Polar Heart Rate Monitor, so click here to enter the contest (to be entered, all you have to do is comment once).

Fit's Tip: If you're a bit crunched for time, then you might want to opt for the higher intensity (75-85% of your MHR) cardio workout at a shorter duration (20 mins).

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Recently I posted about ways to reward yourself for a workout well done, and one of those (and my favorite) is taking a sauna. I don't need to tell you about how great it feels. What I do need to tell you is you to hold off on jumping into the sauna, hot tub or steam room immediately after finishing your workout.

The heat from outdoors combined with the heat of the sauna can have a detrimental effect on your body. After working out, you already have elevated temperatures and your blood vessels are dilated. The heat needs to dissipate in order to bring your heart rate back to your resting zone and to bring blood back to your vital organs - cool downs are not just about finding time to stretch. So instead of rushing into more heat that can cause lightheadedness, dizziness, fatigue, nausea or worse, heat exhaustion, heat stroke and heart attacks, try a cool shower instead. Basically you need to allow your heart rate to return to resting levels before treating yourself to some relaxing heat at the end of your workout.

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