Warm Up and Cool Down
When I was at school, I was taught in gym class that you should always stretch and do a warm up before exercises and a warm down after exercise. That’s what everyone is taught, right? Well that is a load of crap.
Stretching before exercise is supposed to prevent muscle strains and soreness and improve sporting performance, right? NOPE!!!
Stretching before exercise is more likely to cause injuries, especially if you stretch beyond the normal range of motion. It causes the body to overstretch during training, and contrary to popular belief stretching doesn’t reduce muscle soreness or improve performance neither. Even stretching after training can cause injury.
If you do a warm up to prevent injury you’re wasting your time because increasing your heart rate and pumping more blood to the muscles doesn’t prevent strains. But warms up are beneficial for improving performance if they’re exercise specific, they prepare the mind and body for strenuous activity using the same motions, like a boxer doing pad work before a bout or a weight lifter doing a warm up set, but 10 minutes of jogging ain’t a good warm up for strength training. If you’re just doing strength and conditioning, you’re going to need less of a warm up than if you’re going out to compete in a wrestling or fencing championship.
Then there’s the cool down, which we told was really important because it gets rid of metabolic wastes, like lactic acid, which reduces delayed onset muscle soreness, right? Nah, that ain’t true neither because lactate don’t even cause delayed onset muscle soreness. There is no scientific evidence that cooling down reduces delayed onset muscle soreness. So why freaking do one?
Anyways, a cool down exposes exhausted muscles to further strain, which means you either train less hard during the training session or you’re overtrainning, which is a good way to injury yourself and decreases performance.
steph
amica
rob
@ amie
I’m not that flexible!
Don’t html tags work on here?
Lol.
The idiot really thought he was trying to do curls?
I worked at a sports centre gym (gymn?) once where the senior? instructor was taking the new guys who’d just started working there and showing us the standard of the training to ensure we were all working the same way.
I was one of the new instructors, although I’d been training and instructing already for a few years by then.
The manager was also with us and she was barking out the name of the technique and the idiot, sorry, senior instructor, was showing us how to carry it out.
When it came to the curls he showed us how to do the triceps push-down on the cable machine.
The moron didn’t even know what a curl was and he was the senior instructor at the place.
I’m sure all the other new instructors was thinking the same thing I was and not saying anything.
Either that or they were all morons.
Although I suspect at least some of them knew.
When you stretch it looks like your trying to lick yourself.
@ Rezbi
I know what you mean, any freaking idiot can get qualified as a strength coach, personal trainer or fitness instructor, don’t mean they know jack. I used to go to fitness first with my Dad, he was holding some 20kg dumbbells straight out in front of him and pulled them into his tucking his elbows in. One of the trainers told him that ain’t the way to do a bicep curl and he was doing it all wrong. My Dad then curled a 40kg dumbbell and told him he knew how to curl but that weren’t what he was doing. He’s stopped training there because there are too many girls and he don’t believe in unisex saunas.
@ Amie
No, I do it during.
@ heather
I can do that very easily but I stretch out gently for about 5-10 minutes in the morning, I just try to maintain my flexibility not to improve it but I always apply the rule if it hurts, you’re overstretching.
I was at a gym once doing lat pull-downs – I tend to lean back and tense up the upper back muscles.
This ‘instructor’ came up to me and told me I was doing it all wrong and I shouldn’t lean back.
And I was actually ‘feeling’ the exercise working where I wanted it to work.
So I just ignored him and carried on doing what I was doing.
I mean, by that time I’d been an instructor myself (not at that gym, obviously) for about 15 years.
Also, when I worked at an exclusive gym, the professional bodybuilders and instructors who’d been there much longer, and were also personal trainers in their own right, were beginning to copy my training methods.
Some would copy me without mentioning anything and I would see them next time, doing exactly what I was doing, with their clients.
Some would actually come up to me and express surprise at the training I was doing and how they thought it was ‘brilliant’.
And here was this kid, probably straight out of the YMCA, teaching me theories he’d been taught.
I wouldn’t mind if he was right and knew what he was talking about, but he obviously didn’t.
Muppet.
@ Rezbi
That’s funny cos there are loads of girls who think that they will start looking like guys if they start doing strength training, like that’s going to happen. I don’t stretch before or after training. I get a rub down instead and I’m pretty flexible I can do the splits both ways in a handstand no problem. I can’t put both legs behind my head like Steph can but I don’t need to be doing that anyways.
@ Heather
That’s what really freaking annoys me, all these trainers who say you’ve got to train this way and they don’t freaking know why. Do you have a kettlebell coach?
@ Steph
Yeah, obviously if hyper-flexibility is part of your sport you’ve got to stretch in your main training but you don’t need stretch down afterwards. Don’t think many people do a warm down or stretches after sex.
@ bobbygee
Yeah, warm downs and stretch downs are a waste of time but they still teach that crap at school.
I agree with you Steph.
Rezbi, the fitness industry revolves around new theories, most of them are complete bullshit with no scientific evidence to back them up. I remember when they used to say runners were fitter than body builders and weight training made you slow. If running Marathon’s gets you feet, why do most marathon runners look like they just escaped from Belsen and why can’t they do 60 push ups or 20 chin ups in sixty seconds?
I know people who do a 30 minute workout, with a 10 minute warm up and 5 minute stretch before training, and a 10 minute warm down and 5 minute stretch after training and don’t realise they’ve just turned as 30 minute workout into an hour long session.
When I was doing Muay Thai we never used to stretch first, but we did stretch after a warm up — it was the instructor’s club so who was I to disagree with him?
One day I went in and he decided he would do the stretching first.
I knew he was wrong but sometimes you just have to let people find out from experience otherwise they doubt what you say.
Surely enough, he ended up pulling his hamstrings.
Thankfully for him, he didn’t stretch too far, but it bugged him for the rest fo the session.
He knew I was a fitness instructor so he came and asked me, afterward, if he was wrong to do what he did.
He asked me, so I told him, but it was too late by then as he already knew.
He still had to ask to be sure, though.
The point I’m making, Amie, is that you’re absolutely correct.
What’s so stupid, though, is that there are plenty of ‘fitness instructors’ who still believe everything they read.
The fact is, too much of what they think they know is pure theory… no one seems to think to see if it’s actually true through experience.
I’m not one of those people who believe experience is the best teacher as that just takes way too long.
However, I do believe in doing researching and then testing out the theories I read about instead of just accepting it as gospel.
Gosh, I had no intention of posting today… now look what you made me do.
I must say, I prefer a woman who is physically strong as opposed to a weak one… as long as she doesn’t look like Schwartzenegger.
I asked at the gym about warm downs and the gym instructor didn’t have any real good answer why I should do one. I’m not going to do one again.
Steph…
You can do that, no? Do you do a lot of stretching?
@ bobbygee
Heart rate recovery is slowed down by a cool down. Although it might be safer to stretch after training than before there is no reason to so it. For gymnasts and dancers, who need to exceptional flexible, stretching is part of the training but most sports really don’t require being able to do a piqué in arabesque.
All a cool down does is lower the heart rate. I learned when done working out stretch again. Bobby Gee
http://bobbygee.wordpress.com/