For some, cooling can be useful. But most can go directly to the shower. The typical structure of An exercise routineeither a yoga class or a squad session, is usually framed by two easy parts: heating and cooling. Personal trainers insist on their importance, physiology books support them and most video training include them.
However, for many people, just making a 30 -minute race or a 25 -minute force session may seem impossible. Do you really need five more minutes to cool?
The answer is not really. A cooling usually consists of some type of softer movement that acts as an output ramp of training, allowing heart rate and blood pressure to recover little by little until reaching the levels prior to exercise. For most people, that implies slowly trotting after a hard race or stretching after lifting weights. But it can be something as simple as a slow breathing exercises.
Although research has shown that only nine minutes of dynamic movement before exercise can reduce injuries and make training more effective, there are much less data that supports that cooling is necessary, said Andy Galpin, director of the Human Performance Center of the Parker University of Dallas.
Yes from the bicycle of Spinning You are in a hurry to your morning journey to work, you will probably not sabotage the benefits of your training or recovery. However, you could be missing other benefits.
What constitutes a cooling?
“As a general rule,” said Erica Spatz, a cardiologist at Yale’s Faculty of Medicine, a state of cooling is “when the heart rate It descends below 100 pulsations per minute and breathing returns to normal. ”
But there is no protocol or a specific definition of how to get to that state after exercise. Any activity that takes the body to a state of rest could count, said Monika Fleshner, professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
The cooling can be liabilities, such as using a foam roller or doing breathing exercises in the shower. But more often it is active, such as continuing an exercise at a softer pace or moving to a lower resistance on a bicycle of Spinning. If you lift weights, you could do some mobility exercises later.
For a normal person, cooling must last between 5 and 10 minutes, depending on the intensity of the exercise, Spatz said.
Does the cooling work?
In terms of performance or injury prevention, the short response is no. But that does not mean that they are useless.
For decades, experts recommended active cooling to help relieve muscle pain by allowing accumulated lactic acid to dissipate. However, lactic acid theory was already denied in the 1980s, and now we know that this chemical has nothing to do with the pain of the muscles, although many people still believe in this concept, Galpin said.
A 2018 review discovered that active cooling is largely ineffective to improve the performance of the same day or the next day, and do not significantly reduce the pain or damage of the muscles. However, that does not mean that you should skip the cooling if you like them, clarified the co -author of the review, Bas Van Hooren, a sports scientist and attached professor at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands.
“Our review found no inconvenience in cooling,” he said. Some people affirmed that they sat well, or that they used it as a time to socialize, he added.
However, exercise can trigger A stress response And activate a fight or flight reaction in the body, said Fleshner. And although the body will return to a rest state on its own, a passive cooling that focuses on a slow and controlled breathing can activate a rest and digestion response in some people, facilitating a faster return to normal levels of breathing, heart rate and blood pressure, he said.
When do you really need a cooling?
There are three situations in which cooling are useful, if you like them. First, cooling can be useful in especially intense exercises. If you stop suddenly after intense training, your blood pressure could descend while your blood vessels are still dilated, which can make you feel dizzy or even pass out, Spatz explained. This is especially true among people 60 years of age or older or those suffering from heart disease.
Second, people who experience chronic stress can also have a slower return to the rest state, said Fleshner. “A cooling that includes a controlled breathing, such as yoga or meditative stretching, could help them activate their parasympathetic nervous system” to calm the body, he said.
Finally, if you exercise vigorous at night, especially at great intensity, a cooling can make you sleep better, Galpin said. Cortisol levels, stress hormone, increase naturally in the morning and decrease at night, and a moderate to intense exercise can raise them, causing an increase in heart rate.
“The exercise is basically a form of excitement, as well as watching a suspense movie or playing a video game,” he said. In addition to helping the body to a state of rest, cooling can also be a time to reflect on the work done, said Fleshner. The last thing that should be is a source of stress.