Warm ups and cool downs – how to perform at your best in training and competition

Warming up before and cooling down after exercise are essential parts of training and if you want to perform at your best it’s worth spending some time exploring these subjects. In this article we’ll tell you why and show you how!

Warming up

The main part of your workout is where you stimulate fitness and strength gains but to get the most out of your exercise routine you need to get your body ready to train. Training without warming up properly will likely result in a less than ideal workout and may even end in injury. In addition to getting us physically and mentally ready for exercise, a well designed warm up also provides an opportunity to practice the movements we are going to perform in the coming session whilst hopefully minimising the risk of suffering injury while training or competing.

There are 3 components to warming up… 1) a pulse raiser to increase your body temperature and get oxygenated blood pumping around your body, 2) joint mobilisation to make sure your joints are moving freely and are well lubricated with synovial fluid and 3) flexibility to ensure that muscles are warm and pliable thus making them contract better and be less prone to injury.

1)    The pulse raiser – cardiovascular exercise is used to raise the heart rate and is the part of the warm up that makes you warm! It’s important to make the pulse raiser graduated i.e. increase in intensity over time. By using exercises such as rowers, cross trainers or skipping, in addition to raising the pulse, it is possible to mobilise all the major joints of the body. You should finish your pulse raiser at an RPE of around 5/6 or, in other words, feeling ready to get on with some more strenuous exercise! 5 to 10 minutes spent on this component of warming up is plenty – we want to be warmed up and not worn out after all.

2)    Joint mobility – chances are that if you selected the rower, cross trainer or skipping, you’ll have mobilised your major joints already and won’t need to spend any further time getting your joints ready for exercise. If, however, you warmed up using a bike or treadmill, you may well need to mobilise the joints you didn’t use during that exercise. To mobilise a joint, simply take it through its natural range of movement in a controlled fashion, increasing the degree of motion as you feel the joint warming up e.g. shallow knee bends progressing to full squats over 10-15 reps to mobilise the hips and knees or small arm circles progressing to full arm circles to mobilise the shoulders. This will increase the production of synovial fluid within your joints which is our own natural oil that keeps your joints lubricated and healthy.

3)    Flexibility – it’s not uncommon to see people performing slow static stretches as part of their warm up but, as useful as this type of stretching is, it’s far better to utilise a method of stretching called dynamic stretching in the warm up and leave the static stretches for the cool down. Static stretches tend to cause reduced blood flow through muscles, muscular relaxation, the pulse to slow and reduced body temperature – none of which sound like things we want in a warm up! In comparison, dynamic stretches keep the heart rate and body temperature elevated, “wake up” our muscles, mirror the movements likely to be performed in the workout and also promote joint mobility. Dynamic stretches include movements such as lunges, squats, leg swings, arm swings, high knee and heel flick running.

Once you have completed your general warm up, you can move onto your specific preparations for your training session or sport e.g. if you are playing rugby you’ll probably include some ball skills, passing, kicking and tackling. If you are hitting the gym for some heavy strength training, you’ll probably complete some light & moderate sets to get your mind and body ready for the workout to come. These specific activities will really help you “zero in” on the coming training session or game.

Cooling down

After a hard game or workout cooling down can make a big difference to how fast you recover. By cooling down properly you will flush waste materials out of your muscles, reduce muscle stiffness (called DOMS or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) and minimise adaptive shortening which is the reduction in flexibility that can be caused by certain exercises.

Cool downs have 2 components…1) a pulse lowerer during which the heart rate is gradually reduced and 2) static stretches to maintain or develop flexibility.

                1)  Pulse lowerer – this is essentially the reverse of the pulse raiser in that you’ll start out at a reasonably fast pace but slow down over a period of 5-10 minutes and finish with a minute or so of very slow paced activity. The exercise modality is not important and the aim is to reduce the heart rate gradually while pump freshly oxygenated blood around your body. At the end of your pulse lowerer you should feel fairly recovered from your workout or match and your breathing rate should be almost back to normal.

                2)  Static stretching – as your muscles are nice and warm after your workout it makes sense to spend some time stretching them. By holding each stretch for 10-15 seconds you will maintain your current level of flexibility but by stretching each muscle for 30-40 seconds or more you will actually increase the elasticity of your muscles. Stretches are held statically which is very different to the movements prescribed in the warm up and are designed to either lengthen or offset any adaptive shortening that may occur as a result of your training.   Make sure you stretch all of the muscles you have used during your workout although you may choose to spend longer stretching some muscles than others e.g. stretching your tight hamstrings for 45 seconds each but only spending 15 seconds on your already flexible calves.

Spending time warming up and cooling down properly will ensure that you get the most from your workouts and play as well as you possibly can so don’t leave your performance to chance – spend some time designing and perfecting an effective warm up and cool down routine and you should see your performance improve significantly.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Defined as the range of movement at a joint or a group of joints, flexibility is sometimes called suppleness and describes the elasticity of your muscles. Flexible muscles allow large unimpeded joint movements whereas inflexible muscles can leave a joint restricted, possibly dysfunctional and prone to injury.

Factors Effecting Flexibility
As a general rule, females are more flexible than males. This is due to the physiological differences between the sexes; in particular hormone levels. Women produce more of the hormone relaxin which is essential for pregnancy and child birth. Relaxin does as it sounds – it relaxes. Muscles, ligaments and organs are all subject to the influence of relaxin which allows the mother’s body to change as the foetus develops into a baby. Without relaxin, the baby would have no space in which to grow as the mother’s body, in particular the abdomen and pelvis would not stretch to accommodate its growing resident.

Age also affects your flexibility. As we age, our muscles begin to stiffen up; especially if we lead very sedentary lives. Flexibility, like so many other fitness components, will deteriorate if we don’t work at it. It’s worth noting that, however, if you are currently inflexible, you can make dramatic gains in joint mobility by dedicating some time to stretching.

The sports you play and the lifestyle you lead will also affect your flexibility. For example, if you only ever run with short stride lengths and never move outside of that range of movement, your flexibility will adapt to match. If you wear high heeled shoes much of the time, your calf muscles will shorten as they are in a constant state of contraction. Your hamstrings and hip flexors will adaptively shorten if you spend much of your day sat down. Our bodies are master adapters and will adapt to the stresses we place on our bodies and that includes making your muscles shorter and tighter in response to the positions we adopt on a daily basis.

In the short term, flexibility is also affected by temperature and time of day. Warm muscles are more elastic which is why you should warm up before stretching and we tend to be more flexible later in the day as, on waking, your muscles will have shortened slightly from lying in a fixed position for an extended time.

Types of Stretching
There are a number of different types of stretching that you can use to maintain or improve your flexibility…

Static Stretching
Static stretches are slow, controlled movements where you ease into the stretched position and hold it for a specific duration. Static stretching can be either active or passive. Active stretches are ones where you hold yourself in a stretched position e.g. a standing hamstring stretch, whereas passive stretches involve a partner or piece of equipment that is used to hold you in position e.g. a doorframe or towel. Active and passive stretches are equally effective for developing your flexibility and are generally used as part of a cool down when your muscles are warm and liable.

Maintenance versus Developmental Stretching
Holding a stretch for 10 to 15 seconds is called maintenance stretching. Maintenance stretching will stop your muscles from shortening further but will not do much for improving your flexibility. Maintenance flexibility will offset the adaptive shortening effect of your workouts so if you are happy with your current flexibility levels and just want to safeguard your current level of flexibility, make sure you perform maintenance stretches at the end of your workouts.

If you want to improve or develop your flexibility, you will need to hold your stretches for longer. Holding a stretched position for 30 seconds or more is called developmental stretching. As you ease into a stretch and hold that position, you will, after 10 to 15 seconds, feel your muscles relax as the sensory nerves within the muscles realise that “hey – this feels good!” Subsequently, you can ease a little further into the stretch. By repeating this cycle of stretch/hold/relax/stretch you will take your muscles into a far deeper stretch than you could when performing maintenance stretching.

The length of time you spend on developmental stretching is debateable with experts recommending anywhere between 30 seconds and 5 minutes per stretch. I know from both personal experience and that of my clients that, if it took you 20 plus years to become inflexible, it’s going to take plenty of time to get that flexibility back so if you are serious about improving your flexibility, stretch long and often.

PNF and CRAC
Proprioceptive Neuromuscular facilitation and Contract-Relax, Antagonist Contract stretching types of stretching used to speed up and increase the degree of relaxation in your muscles so that you can stretch more deeply and are techniques used by physiotherapists, sports therapists and other body work specialists. Whilst very effective, it is very important you use these techniques properly to avoid injury and a full explanation is beyond the scope of this article. Both PNF and CRAC stretching will be covered in a later article.

Dynamic Stretching
Static stretches – active, passive, maintenance or developmental – all result in reduced tension within your muscles and a degree of relaxation that, while beneficial after exercise, is not conducive to a successful energetic workout. In studies, muscles that have been statically stretched were less able to generate force and were essentially temporarily weaker after being exposed to static stretches. In addition, when you stretch, the parasympathetic nervous system becomes a dominant factor. The parasympathetic nervous system is all about rest, recovery and relaxation and is definitely not who we need in charge of our bodies before hitting the gym for an intense workout. Enter dynamic stretching…

Dynamic stretches are controlled, rhythmical movements designed to take your muscles through a full range of movement to warm them up and prepare them for your coming workout but without causing them to relax. Examples of dynamic stretches include leg swings, arm circles, side bends, waist twists, squats and lunges. All of these movements will mobilise your joints and prepare your muscles for your coming workout and should be performed after a brief cardio warm up to get your blood pumping and raise your temperature slightly. Perform 8 to 15 repetitions of a handful of stretches to ensure your muscles are warmed up and ready for action. Start with small movements and gradually increase the range of movement over the course of a few reps but stop short of stretching your muscles balistically. Ballistic stretching is a sports specific form of stretching that, although necessary in sports such as kick boxing or gymnastics, is too risky and provides minimal benefits for the average fitness enthusiast. To ensure your stretches are dynamic and not ballistic, make sure you control the end range of the movements you are performing and decelerate your limbs before the “snap” your muscles taught.

Closing Thoughts
Flexibility is one of those things you only miss when it’s gone. A lack of flexibility can contribute to poor posture, joint pain and difficulty performing certain exercises such as squats. It doesn’t take a lot of work to maintain your flexibility but, if over the last decade or two you have stiffened up, you may need to prioritize your stretching if you want to regain your youthful elasticity. Modern living positions, a sedentary lifestyle, age and even fashion can all contribute to robbing your muscles of their natural and healthy range of movement so, if you want to avoid the problems associated with poor flexibility; make sure you make time to stretch. As professional wrestler Diamond Dallas Page says in his book “Yoga for Regular Guys”, “Flexibility is youth”.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Your spine consists of 33 individual vertebrae which are separated by intervertebral discs and held together by inelastic ligaments. Often, because of poor posture or a sedentary lifestyle, the spine can lose some of its mobility which can lead to back pain and loss of function. Perform these exercises on a daily basis to maintain the mobility of your spine.

Standing Twists
To mobilize your spine, stand with your feet hip-width apart, legs slightly bent and your arms hanging down by your sides. Keep your arms loose and relaxed and turn your upper body to the left, allowing your arms to swing around to the left side of your body. Reverse direction turn your body to the right allowing your arms to swing the other way. Try to rotate slightly further each time and allowing the gentle swinging action of your arms to help take you further into the twist. Repeat until you have completed 10 repetitions on each side.

Hump and Hollow
Kneel on all fours with your hands directly beneath your shoulders and your knees beneath your hips. Breathe in and lift your back up towards the ceiling to form a hump. Slowly exhale and allow your abdomen to descend towards the floor to form a hollow. Continue alternating between humps and hollows in time with your breathing and complete 10 repetitions in total. This exercise can also be performed in a standing position by slightly bending your knees and leaning forwards with your hands braced on your lower thighs.

Quadruped Side Bends
Kneeling on all fours, slowly walk your hands around to the left side of your body, bending your spine to the side and trying to look behind you. Hold the furthest position you can comfortable achieve for two to three seconds before walking your hands around to the other side. Continue walking from one side to the other until you have performed five repetitions per side.

 

 

Spinal Rolls
Lie on your back on a soft exercise mat. Slowly pull your knees into your chest. Maintaining this tucked position, roll up onto your butt. Immediately roll backwards and up onto your upper back/shoulders. Continue rolling back and forth until you have completed 10 repetitions.

Stability Ball Circles
Sit upright on a stability ball with your feet flat on the floor and your hands by your sides. Keep your body upright. Try to draw a anti-clockwise circle with your pelvis by pushing your hips to the left so that your weight is on your right butt cheek, pushing your hips backwards and leaning forwards slightly, pushing your hips to the right and shifting your weight onto your left butt cheek and finally pushing your hips forwards, tipping your pelvis slightly under. Immediately make a clock-wise circle by rotating your pelvis in the opposite direction. Continue until you have made five circles each way.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Part of the problem with stretching is that relatively few people allocate sufficient time to develop good flexibility. It took many months or even years to become inflexible so it’s going to take a concerted effort to restore full muscle length and elasticity – there are no quick fixes with stretching! If you really want to improve your flexibility, you will need to stretch not just at the end of your workout (although this is a good practice) but have dedicated flexibility sessions 3-4 times a week to really work on your stretching. This all may sound like a lot of work but the beauty of stretching is that it requires minimal effort, can be done almost anywhere and, after a while, can be very relaxing so it won’t impact on your regular training and ultimately will enhance your fitness and performance.

How to stretch for maximum results…

If you are keen to improve your flexibility and have decided to dedicate some time to stretching, it’s worth following these guidelines to get the most from your time…

1. Always perform a gentle warm up prior to stretching. Warm muscles stretch more easily. A couple of minutes of brisk walking or slow jogging will be ideal.
2. Wrap up warm by wearing suitable clothing so you don’t get cold while stretching.
3. Make sure you use an exercise mat so you are as comfortable as possible.
4. Some relaxing music may enhance your stretching but is not essential.
5. Ease into your stretches – initially hold each stretch for 15-30 seconds before gradually relaxing deeper into the stretch to hold for a further 15-30 seconds.
6. Make sure you breathe whilst stretching as holding your breath can reduce the effectiveness.
7. Work logically through your stretching routine and avoid too many changes of body position. You can either work from top to bottom, bottom to top or perform all your standing stretches before moving onto your seated stretches or vice versa. Design a flowing stretching routine and move through it unhurriedly.
8. Make sure you don’t let your face or neck muscles tighten up whilst you stretch – this sends mixed messages to your nervous system and will make your stretching less effective.
9. Imagine your muscles lengthening as your breath gently out – visualisation can really enhance flexibility training.
10. If your muscles burn or start to shake reduce the intensity of the stretch as this is a message that you are over doing it.
11. Feel free to work on different stretches on different days to reduce the overall time you spend on each stretching session.
12. Flexibility is easily lost and the adage of “use it or lose it” definitely applies so once you have reached the degree of flexibility you’d like to maintain, include regular but less frequent stretching sessions to avoid losing your hard-won elasticity.

Stretching might not be the most exciting part of your training but it’s the element that is most likely to extend your training and playing career. Maintaining or improving your flexibility can pay off handsomely so in terms of health and performance so it’s time well invested.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Stretching is a vital but sometimes overlooked component of fitness which is often relegated to an afterthought at the end of a workout. Sadly, this oversight is quite likely to result in slower recoveries, loss of performance and ultimately injury. In this article we’ll lift the lid on all things stretching…

Flexibility is defined as “the range of movement available at a joint of joint” and is measured in degrees. Every joint in the body has an accepted range of movement that should be achievable assuming no joint injuries exist…for example your should be able to pull your foot up so that it touches your backside whilst your knees are together which demonstrates flexibility in the quadriceps of the front of the thigh and you should be able to flex your leg forwards at the hi to a right angle with your body which demonstrates flexibility in the hamstrings. There are a wide variety of flexibility tests which can be found by searching on the internet or having a fitness assessment at your local gym although most people know if they have poor flexibility just by how they move around.

Having poor flexibility (i.e. below the norms) can have a major impact on function and health. For example, if the hamstrings become overly tight they become much more prone to injury and also, because of the length/tension relationship with the quadriceps, the knee joint can become unbalanced and more likely to develop osteoarthritis – a condition of wear and tear which effects the cartilage within the joint. In another example, having overly tight pectoralis major muscles (the muscles of the chest) can have a profound effect on posture and function of the shoulder joint. Tight pecs will cause the arms to rotate inwards at the shoulder joint and may even lead to a rounding of the upper portion of the spine causing a condition called hyperkyphosis which makes the upper back look hunched when viewed from the side.

Being inflexible can also affect your sporting performance. For example, if your hip flexors and hamstrings (the muscles that allow your hip to move forwards and backwards) are short and tight, your running stride length will be reduced. This means that you will cover less distance per stride and therefore be a slower, less effective runner. Likewise, having tight shoulders will mean that when you throw a ball you will have a reduced “power arc” and be less able to generate force thus reducing the length of your throws. To experience this phenomenon for yourself try this experiment…stand next to a wall with your arm stretched above your head. Bend the knees very slightly and try to jump as high as you can. Mark the apex of your jump with a dab of ink on the tip of your index finger. Now try the same exercise but this time allow yourself to sink into a full 90 degree squat at the knee. You should find that you can jump significantly higher. By increasing the range of movement you also allow for greater power production and that will have huge benefits on the playing field.

In part 2 we’ll provide you with a list of methods to maximise your flexibility training…

Popularity: 2% [?]

There is a substantial amount of research that indicates that held stretches, such as bending down to touch your toes, to stretch your hamstrings can actually impair dynamic sports and fitness performance.

Canadian researchers looked at the effects of maximal and sub-maximal held stretches on jump performance (1). Ten people participated in the study and each performed 4 x 30sec. of maximal range of movement stretching (to what the researchers called the ‘point of discomfort’ (PoD). They also performed non-maximum range of movement stretches (2, stretch reps at 75% and 50% of PoD). All stretches targeted the hamstrings, quadriceps and ankle muscles. Five minutes after one of the stretch protocols the participants performed various plyometric jump exercises, such as drop (depth) jumps and squat jumps. It was discovered that these were negatively affected. For example, drop jump and squat jump height was reduced by 4.6% and 5.7% respectively, compared to the participants’ jump performance without prior held stretching. The researchers answered the ‘why’ question (sort of) by stating, “…it is hypothesised that changes in muscle compliance may play a role.” Basically they believe that stretching reduced the elasticity and power potential of the survey participant’s muscles.

There will be those who still hold onto old school ideas about stretching who may argue, ‘Ah, yes, but you need to stretch to avoid injury and to achieve the necessary range of movement for your sport’. Well, ‘yes and no’. Yes, you do need to have the necessary range of movement to perform the technique/techniques required of your sport. And it is also a good idea to include held stretches in your warm downs to boost recovery. But there is a considerable amount of ‘no’

Stretching can actually lead to injury before sports performance

Canadian researchers conducted a research review looking specifically at the relationship between stretching in the warm-up and injury prevention (2). They concluded that stretching had little benefit to dynamic performance, for similar reasons as previously noted, but also came up with these other selected findings:

1)   Stretching has little relevance to sports where ‘excessive muscle length’ is not required e.g. jogging

2)   Stretching will not protect a muscle from being strained during an eccentric contraction – of which more below

3)   Stretching can mask pain in humans

Most hamstring injuries, for example, occur when the hamstrings undergo an eccentric (lengthening under load) contraction to arrest the forward travel of the lower leg and foot to pull them back toward the ground when running or to stop the leg’s travel when kicking. Held stretching will have little or no effect on reducing this potentiality, but dynamic stretching and strengthening warm up drills will. These exercises include leg and arm swings, walking lunges, trunk rotations, calf raises and sprint type drills – all performed at increasing intensity across the warm up. Athletes and fitness trainers should perform these with control and progress their speed of performance over time (if they are unfamiliar with them) when preparing for dynamic activity.

1. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2007 Nov;101(5):587-94. Epub 2007 Aug 4
2. Clin J Sport Med. 1999 Oct;9(4):221-7

Popularity: 1% [?]