WARM UP & COOL DOWN IN TRAINING

From my own experience I know that very often small elements of the training session structure, that is, the beginning, which is called warm up, and the end, which is called cool down, are omitted by many runners. Reasons for this are numerous: from efforts to save time, to just plain neglect, as of something of no importance. Both attitudes are wrong.

What kind of role does a warm up play in the training session? The most obvious answer is to warm up the muscles, ligaments and tendons, and prepare the nervous and cardio-respiratory systems for the specific workout. Normally an athlete spends on it, depending on the upcoming workout, outside temperature and his own body condition, somewhere from 5 to 30 min.

Warm up should consist of all blocks of preparation: biomechanical, physiological, psychological, mental and spiritual. In Pose Method we are using special running technique drills after a short run (5-10 minutes) to get the body into the right biomechanical structure of movement, but at the same time, it is also a psychological and mental tune-up for the future workout. These parts should be performed on a conscious level of understanding why we are doing it.

We do not use stretching exercises in the warm up part of the training session, because there is no need to stretch the muscles before the workout, where muscles, tendons and ligaments are not involved in a big range of motion. We are using flexibility exercises, which is the more appropriate name for stretching, mostly after the workout, in the cool down part of the training session or in a separate training session.

The cool down part of the training session has its own specific role as the process returning the body to its normal condition, including its biomechanical, physiological, psychological, mental and spiritual condition. When your training is done, it is very important to return all the body's blocks and levels to their norm. This means to recover muscle strength, relaxation, tone, technique and coordination, proper perception of movement, and its mental condition.

So cool down is a multi-dimensional exercise and should be treated as seriously as the main part of the training session. Time-wise this part is not time consuming either, but it could be a little longer than warm up, because returning to the norm could be a more demanding process than warm up. There are more chances here to lose technique, perception, proper muscle condition and mental focus. So this work could take longer compared to the time devoted to warm up.

In the Pose Method we again use special running drills for cool down to recover the specific conditions related to running technique and to focus on the main elements of running. But through these exercises we return the body's strength condition as well. We additionally use special regimes of strength exercises to recovery muscle flexibility, tendon and ligament elasticity and coordination.

If the main workout was difficult with a load on the cardio- respiratory systems, then we use some slow run to recover these systems to the norm. Cool down is not only the finishing part of the training session, but it is also a preparation to the future one, which requires your mental and psychological efforts to get these things done in the non-stop process of moving from one training session to another.

So, these seemingly simple parts of training, as you see, are not so simple at all, and they require your full attention and skill development, as any other part of your training. Start from this point and consciously build up your better understanding of the deep meaning of these parts of your training process and it will be your next step to perfection of your training.

Dr.Romanov