Cool Down and Static Stretches

What is the purpose?

The purpose is to essentially cool your body down, to gradually decrease your heart rate. A cool down is crucial element in helping flush out lactic acid build up from the run and helping improve flexibility. The cool down is when you are able to influence your flexibility the most as you are the most warm and your soft tissue (muscles, fascia) will be able to release more easily. .

Key Guidelines:

A cool down should include slow jog and/or walk to help bring the heart rate down followed by a series of static stretches. Try to avoid sitting down too early to stretch. Make sure you finish you run with a slow jog or walk (3-5 min )before sitting down to do stretches. You should hold each stretch for at least 30 seconds. In areas where you feel more tension, you should spend more time aside from cool down to stretch. When stretching you should feel a gentle pull that begins to release or lessen as you hold longer. If you feel a strong pull back off-it will result in the tissue getting tighter. If you have a lot of soft tissue restrictions in a certain area they will respond more to soft tissue release and gentle stretching. (Analogy-knot in a rope-will get tighter if you pull apart). When stretching think of releasing tissue versus trying to stretch it apart. Deep Breathing helps release tissue as you are going through the stretches and it also helps make it easier to transition out of stretches.

Why is it important to Stretch?

· Stretching helps bring the soft tissue back to it's resting length
· soft tissue that doesn't get stretched results in faulty mechanics that often leads to injury
· muscles that are held in a sustained shortened position as a result of not stretching cannot effectively contract and relax

Injuries and stretches:

Here are a few examples of some conditions/injuries and common areas that are tight:

1)shin splints-gastroc (calfs)
2)ITB friction syndrome/lateral knee pain-TFL, gluts
3)low back pain-hip flexors, gluts, lower external rotators
4)plantar fascitis-gastrocs (calfs)

Other Tidbits of Info for Stretching:

· yoga poses are helpful to release more than one plane of soft tissue. The body is truly connected (fascia connects several regions of the body). Think of the sweater anology. If you pull on the bottom of your sweater the top of your sweater is affected. Same goes for if there is tension at your side this can impact your shoulder. (I've included some simple yoga poses in the appendix section)
· foam roller and massage is helpful to help prevent tissue from getting restricted and to help breakdown current restrictions
· an Athletic therapist can assess your running mechanics to ensure they are sound and help you identify if there are any specific soft tissue restrictions that may be contributing to your injury and/or faulty mechanics
· an Athletic Therapist can help you achieve more mobility in restricted areas

Check out tomorrow for key stretches for runners and endurance athletes