Daily tip #26| Cooling down

Cooling down, as in, cooling down after a workout. It doesn't seem too important, does it?


Cooling down is actually important. What is 'cooling down' defined by? A cool down is a period of time for example, at the end of a workout session,  when you gradually decrease the physical activity of your body to almost resting. It usually consists aerobic moves, together with stretches.


It is important for several reasons, one of them is that it will help remove the metabolic waste your body might have acquired during the workout.


There are many more reasons though, for example if you feel faint after exercising - you do not cool down properly, or at all. Why would you feel faint? During physical activity, say, a workout, blood is pumped around your body by your heart. It circulates. The blood comes in to the heart, gets pumped out, and returns, repeat. During exercise blood is assisted in returning to the heart by muscle contractions and several other factors. If you suddenly stop all physical activity - your heart will continue to pump the blood around your body, but nothing will assist the blood in returning. And that is the reason why you feel faint.


If you properly cool down, that is, gradually decrease physical activity to almost none you heart will slow down with the slow decrease in the intensity, preventing you feeling faint.

You don't have to do stretches or aerobic movies to cool down, if you're jogging, you can begin decreasing the speed and intensity into walking, and from walking into slowly stopping for at least half a minute. Stretching after a work out though, is recommended.


The length of a cool down varies from person and exercise. If the exercise was strenuous - obviously your heart has been working intensively and will need a longer gradual cool down. If you are out of shape, or just a beginner you might also have to take it easy, as your body and heart might not have adapted to this kind of stress yet. Along with warming up, cooling down, as you see, is important!

Drink a lot of water, do not underestimate sleeping properly, stop making common mistakes and you'll be much happier!

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Daily tip #25| Warming up

Warming up before exercising is essential, no matter the complexity of the exercise. Everybody knows you need to warm up, but not everyone does it long enough to actually properly warm up, so let me teach you how to.



Then again, lets see what warming up is defined by. Warming up basically raising your body temperature. Why would you want to do that? Increasing your body temperature allows your muscles to flex and stretch more, obviously, since cold muscles don't like to move freely. Your tendons, ligaments and cartilage also increase in flexibility, leading to a lesser risk of injuries, strains and tears.


The warm up movements also help activate the fluids in your joints, reducing their friction and wear. Which is obviously great as you get older! After warming up your heart can properly adjust to the tempo and regulate blood easier. Sudden exercise can lead to many injuries and a heart attack.


A good enough warm up should get your heart pumping and a little bit of sweat. A basic warm up would be walking slightly faster than average for 10 minutes before jogging. Your heart will be ready to accept the need for blood and nourishments of your muscles.

Warming up reduces pre-mature fatigue, maybe you haven't been warming up properly and you're a better runner than you think? It also enables you to get the most benefits out of a workout.


The lenght of the warm up should be dictated by the intensity of the following exercise. As I said, average jogging should be prepared for with 10 minutes of walking slightly faster than average. Don't have the time to warm up? Get ready for severe injuries and a heart attack. Cold muscles do not want to stretch and work.

If you're interested in my warm up - it would take quite a while to write it all down. But it takes just around 15 minutes, consisting many different ways to warm up, like Jumping Jacks, Scorpions, Trunk Twists, Clap push-ups, Lat pulldowns and so on and on. I do 18 different exercises to warm up, so as you can see it can get quite complex. There are also ways to fix your muscle anatomy with warming up in specific ways before a workout.


Always make sure to properly warm up before exercise, as it can increase your results, help the recovery be more bearable ( keep in mind pain is not the only indicator of a good workout ) and prevent injury.


If you have no idea how to start running, here's a basic week:

Drink a lot of water, do not underestimate sleeping properly, stop making common mistakes and you'll be much happier!

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Daily tip #24| Stretching

Everyone knows how to stretch. But unfortunately very few know how to stretch properly and what it is for. Follow along.

Stretching is a commonly seen thing, sadly, when asked, people think they're doing it to prevent injury, while in some cases the risk of injury after stretching increases.

Let me explain what stretching is, what it does and what's it for. Stretching basically helps maintain normal range of motion. It can also help fix muscle inbalances.

Stretching does not prevent injury, which usually occurs during normal range of motion, why would widening the range of motion help prevent injury? 

Stretching reduces the strenght of the muscle in it's tensed form, meaning you can get easily hurt if you do lifting after stretching. I suggest you warm up, not stretch, these are two different things. Some people also stretch after the workout, saying it will reduce the soreness, which it actually does not. 

The reason why people think stretching prevents injury is because they're confusing or mixing it up with warming up. Warming up does reduce the risk of injury and in fact, greatly.

With stretching you can also fix muscle imbalances, it's a wide subject, so I'll do an entire daily of it someday. Muscle imbalance is basically one or two big muscles doing the work for other, smaller, weaker muscles. For example your bicep and pec minor doing the work for your lower lats while you're doing pull ups, that's a really common one. How do you fix that? You stretch out your arm entirely before doing pull ups, stretch out both of your arms against a wall as far as you can - ofcourse, don't injure yourself. If you do this, the smaller and weaker muscles will start working, instead of letting the bicep and pec minor take over the work completely.

So, what is stretching good for? It is good for decreasing imflammation and increasing the range of motion, allowing you do reach better, or sit on your straight leg. There are many more uses for flexibility too, ofcourse. I see a lot of people not doing the stretching properly, you can actually injure yourself while stretching the wrong way. So how do to stretch the right way?

To stretch the right way, first of all warm up, and then cool down a little bit. You should choose a stretch and do it so you feel pulling in the muscle - don't go into the pain zone though. Many people get this part right, but they bounce or do the same stretch repeatedly in a few seconds, that is plain wrong. Once you get into the position, that right spot, you should hold and continue to hold for atleast 30 seconds. Then release. Once a day is enough, studies shown that three stretches of 30 seconds a day had the same result as one stretch of 30 seconds per day. If you're doing it right, your flexibility should increase in about six weeks, if it doesn't, increase the hold into around 60 seconds. Don't increase if you see improvement though! You shouldn't expect too much because it is, afterall, a slow process.

Besides improving the range of motion, stretching can be relaxing (exmpl. joga). I'm hoping this cleared up the misconseption of stretching and now you know!

Drink a lot of water, sleep properly, stop making common mistakes and you'll be much happier!

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