The Importance of Cooling Down
Warming up is important. Cooling down after a workout doesn't get enough love.
Good Morning!
I recently was invited to take part in a continuing education course to help people move better. I said ‘absolutely,’ because for as many very fit individuals as I train, about 25% of them experience pain or limitation in movement that inhibits their ability to get the most out of exercise.
The course, which my acquaintance enrolled in and invited me to be their “study buddy” for, is incredibly complex.
There are far too many concepts in it relating to the body for me to include in one newsletter, and I want you to actually read this so that I won’t bore you with the expensive (like, thousands of dollars worth) details.
The big takeaway from Week 2’s lecture was something I hadn’t thought about much until our presenter broke down what happens during controlled breathing.
Then, something clicked for me.
Overall, “cooling down” or being more intentional about breathing, slow controlled movements, and relaxing more toward the end of the workout is highly overlooked.
I started to incorporate this into more of my sessions with my current clients (and hope it might encourage some readers to try a free assessment session with me) to see how much cooling down is necessary to get the body out of a tense state.
The Importance of Cooling Down
When we breathe, some pretty interesting things happen around our body, particularly in our nervous and musculoskeletal systems.
Controlled breathing, with deep, long exhales and semi-forceful inhales, plays a crucial role in calming the nervous system and counteracting the effects of stress.
This reduction in stress does something to our bones, which are the exact things that “move” us. Muscles do the work and exert the work to move us, but without bones to act against, we would be gelatinous blobs.
This will be the idea that we return to later when we round out when tension is not a “muscle-based” issue.
Controlled breathing, especially while cooling down after a workout, when bones have shifted every which way (sometimes out of positions favorable for comfort), influences the position and movement of the rib cage and pelvis, the likes of which quite literally make up about 60% of us.
This is where things get interesting.
When you consider how closely most aches and pains originate near these areas, you understand why bones and bone position are essential for pain management.
Low back pain? Look at the position of your pelvis. Shoulder Pain? Look at the position of your ribs.
Cooling down essentially brings these bone structures back to a position of relaxation, meaning ribs are not scraping on shoulder blades, hips and femurs (or thigh bones) are not grinding on tibias (creating knee pain), and et cetera, et cetera.
Why Should You Care About This?
Fundamental to the course I’m taking is the idea that no single person’s body is perfectly shaped to avoid these pains.
In fact, the way our bodies fight gravity pulling us downward is by shifting our bones into favorable positions to live.
Without sounding too grim, if you’ve spent any time in an assisted living home, you may see a few residents there who have lost (or are losing) the fight with gravity — spines are rounded to the tune of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or some are wheelchair bound — because of lack of movement.
Knowing this is crucial for humbling yourself about your next injury, whenever it may be. If you’re someone like myself, who constantly thinks, “That shouldn’t have happened,” every time you get hurt, remember that you are simply a bag of bones fighting gravity, and gravity took a small win.
I don’t want to make this sound like everyone’s body is positioned incorrectly - that isn’t true. The natural orientation of anyone’s body is dependent on the life they live and the activities they engage in.
Still, knowing that the potential for injury or pain exists because of a weird bone orientation might make you think, “How can I mitigate the risk of bad bones?”
Pain and Injuries Are More Complex Than You Think
Remember earlier when I said, “bones are the exact things that ‘move’ us?”
Great!
Now, after that last section, it would make sense that bones (and their respective positions in our bodies) are also essentially the culprits of a significant portion of injuries, aches, and pains (but not all).
This newsletter will not cure your pain overnight or even fix your ailments. Please refer to my first hyperlink if you need help with that.
It will hopefully give more insight into why cooling down and regulating breath is essential.
If something as simple as a few deep breaths in a stretch at the end of the workout can influence how aligned your spine, pelvis, and ribs are, why wouldn’t you at least try it?
Pain can persist for a multitude of reasons not pertaining to bones but for those “tweaks” and “aches” that feel like “pulled muscles,” a routine of cooling down could pay tremendous dividends for alleviating them.
Some may even consider “warming up” with breathwork to get into good movement positions, too.
But for more intense and demanding workouts, something more active and movement-based might be required to help generate body heat for complex tasks (get it? WARM up?).
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