The Importance of a Warming Up and Cooling Down

After a long day working at the office, you hurry to a gym like the Pulse gym at the Athenaeum Spa in Malta and make use of your precious time before getting some sleep at home. Do you really need to waste some time by doing warming up and cooling down? Why don't we just skip to the main exercises and finish them? While most people have understood that exercising is important but few have really understood the warming up and cooling down is just as important as the exercises themselves.

After a long sleep or rest, your muscles are getting stiff and cold. Your muscles are still at rest and need to be warmed up gradually before exercise. If you can spare some time to warm up with a low intensity exercise, you will make your muscles warmer which means more flexibility.

Cold muscles are not prepared for shock or impact as good as warm muscles therefore you risk yourself for injury if you don't warm up before working out. During warming up, oxygen and nutrients are transported to your muscles, giving them extra energy so that you will not be out of breath easily. Warming up also prepares your heart for an increase in physical activity to prevent drastic rise of blood pressure.

The cool down also reduce the post workout muscle soreness. During exercises, the heart pumps oxygen and nutrients to your muscles. The same thing goes for the muscles, they push away used up oxygen and by products into the bloodstream to your heart. When the activity stops suddenly, the force that keeps by-products away from the muscles suddenly stops too. Lactic acid, the main cause of muscle soreness stays in the muscle, causing some pain the next day you wake up.

When you are finished with your workout it is important to cool down. Many people skip this phase, but cooling down is another way to prevent injury. Cooling down is a matter of bringing your heart rate back to a normal state at the end of your workout. This is necessary to promote overall health.

The warm up and cool down doesn't take any longer than a few minutes. These few minutes spent is worth the low risk of pain and injury in your exercises. If you have very little time to work out, consider cutting your rest time between sets rather than skipping the warm up and cool down.

For more gym, nutrition & fitness information, please visit the Pulse gym at the Athenaeum Spa in Malta and the professional fitness instructors will answer all your questions.