Cool Down Workout - Cool Down Stretching Routine

Cool Down Workout - Cool Down Stretching Routine

This Fitness Blender Cool Down Workout video is made of thorough stretches to help you slowly bring down your heart rate and help fend off muscle soreness after a tough workout.

So long as your muscles aren’t completely cold (for example, if you have been sitting in front of your work computer all day), you can also do this stretching workout as a standalone routine to help improve flexibility and decrease stress. If you’ve been sedentary for a long period of time, do a quick 2-3 minutes of marching in place in order to get your blood moving and your muscles more primed for a good stretch, then jump right in.

We are holding each stretch for 30 seconds. Holding a position for this length of a period is wonderful for improving flexibility, but you don’t want to hold a stretch for that long before a workout – make sure that you don’t do this routine before a more strenuous HIIT or strength workout as it can actually increase your chances of injury.

Cool Down Stretches

Toe Touch

Inside Thigh

Wide Toe Touch

Standing Quadriceps

Hip Flexor + Arm Cross Pull

Overhead Triceps

Downward Dog

Downward Dog + Leg Extension, Hip Opener

Plank Calf Stretch

Modified Pigeon

Cobra

Child’s Pose

Lying Torso Twist

Full Body

Use smooth and controlled motions to go through each one of these movements. You never want to bounce or force a range of motion that is painful, as this could end up doing far more harm than good, and even causing injury. As you can, push the range of motion, very slowly and very gently, but never to the point of pain.

This is one of our longer videos of this sort, but if you give this routine a shot you’re going to find that you like the way that you feel by the time you’re done (particularly after that nice long full body stretch). The harder the workout that you did before you got to this video, the better that these flexibility exercises are going to feel.

You can do this video every day of the week if you like, even several times a day if you are feeling as though you are having extra muscle stiffness or soreness.

Original article and pictures take cloudfront.fitnessblender.com site