Warming up and cooling down before and after exercise workouts are effective ways for your body to become acclimated to exercise and completion of exercise or activities. It doesn't matter whether you're running a marathon or doing an easy yoga workout; cooling down following any activity helps lower your heart rate and transition your muscles from activity to a lower activity level.
Rationale
Cooling down following a period of activity decreases the temperature in your muscles. Gentle exercises performed during a cool down, such as dynamic and static stretches, breathing exercises, and slow range of motion movements, may also help prevent postexercise stiffness as well as slowly transition muscles from high to low activity, which may help prevent muscle, tendon and ligament injuries. Stretching and other gentle forms of exercise also help prevent blood from pooling in your extremities, especially if you're focused on an upper or lower body workout.
Pulse Rate
Following moderate to intense activity, whether you've engaged in soccer with friends, run a marathon or completed an aerobic or strength-training workout at home, your pulse rate increases. Cooling down following brief bursts of activity helps lower the heart rate. The harder you work out, the harder your heart works to pump oxygen throughout your body to feed your muscles. Brief periods of cool downs during your routine or following your exercise routine will effective lower your pulse rate back to normal ranges. Your normal heart rate depends on your weight and physical condition, but normal heart rate ranges between 60 and 100 beats per minute.
Lactic Acid
Cooling down offers benefits besides lowering your heart rate. Cooling down also helps the body get rid of built-up lactic acid stored in the muscles during intense exercise and activity. When you take the time to cool down with gentle stretching or other exercise after workout out, your body is able to slowly disperse the built-up stores of lactic acid in the muscles. Perform static stretches or slow walk for 5 to 10 minutes following your workout for optimal benefits.
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness
Delayed onset muscle soreness may be reduced by cooling down following your exercise workout. Gently stretching your muscles following a workout helps elongate the muscles and prevents cramping and tightening immediately following and exercise and may help reduce muscle soreness or stiffness the day or two following an exercise activity or routine.
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