Sunday 7 August 2011

Is cool-down important?

Please excuse the briefness of this post; I'll expand it further for another post.

A man called Lubo has come into our lives over the last 8 months and he knows a thing or two about fitness training; in fact he's well qualified.  Last night we were sitting outside with coffee on our patio and we were talking about exercise generally.  I said how I liked to do a sprint finish so I could really enjoy all those endorphins and then to burst in through the front door, all breathless and dripping with sweat.

He advises against this, no matter what good fun it is.  It's important to cool-down for 5-10 minutes and for me, at my age, to bring my heart rate down to around 100-110bpm.

"Will I be storing up future problems if I don't do that Lubo?"

"No, you might not have a future".

So, there's more to cooling down than clearing out that lactic acid from muscles.  It's a heart thing as well.  We'll come back to that another time.

2 comments:

  1. The way I see it, the problem in this country is about not getting exersise.
    Cooling down is benificial after hard exersise,of course it is, but the notion that not doing so will somehow affect your life expectantcy is wrong.
    Doug, you will hear about this sort of stuff from time to time. Dont let it worry you.
    Maybe for the likes of Usain Bolt but not us.

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  2. Thanks anon, I appreciate different perspectives like this. Well I'm not really too worried, afterall I've done alright so far and I reckon I'm in better shape than I was 20 years ago.
    f333sssssssss (sorry, hamster walked over keyboard)
    Certainly there is a logic to cooling down, just like warming up gradually. You know, it takes me a good 30 minutes to do this properly and it seems to work okay for me.

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