Warmups and cooldowns are often overlooked and taken for granted. However, they are critical for your body’s athletic performance and longevity. Before you start moderate to rigorous physical activities, do your body a favor and spend some time with warmup and stretching routines to make it easier to tackle more intense movements. After your workout, help configure your body to properly recover by engaging in cooldown routines.
Here are 3 reasons why warmups are important and 3 reasons why cooldowns are critical:
Top 3 Benefits of Warmups
- Raises body and muscle temperature which increases oxygen to your muscles, allowing them to contract and relax with ease. Your heart will also be ready to start working harder for the real workout.
- Reduces risk of injury by improving muscle elasticity and increasing blood flow to your muscles; this will allow for efficient cooling later and will permit your body to properly perform a workout.
- Helps you mentally prepare by giving your mind more time to think about what you’re going to do during the workout. By thinking about it, you’re ensuring that your body and mind will be ready to succeed.
Top 3 Benefits of Cooldowns
- Regulates your heart rate from a fast, working rate and down to a slow, stable preventing dizziness and light-headedness among other things. Your body will naturally release dopamine and serotonin which are hormones responsible for making us feel good and less stressed.
- Reduces the build-up of lactic acid which can lead to muscle cramping and stiffness. Cooling down helps speed up the process of releasing lactic acids in our body helps promote full body recovery.
- Prevents injuries such as muscle tears. By skipping cooldown after exercising not only slows down muscle recovery, but it can also reduce the benefits gained from a solid workout.
Now that you are well versed in why warmups and cooldowns are good for you, let’s turn to our SunnyFit® app because we made it easy for you to warmup prior to and cooldown after your workout. Before you begin a workout on the SunnyFit® app, we provide a variety of warmup and cooldown videos led by our certified trainers.
How to Add Warmups and Cooldowns to Your Workouts
Follow these steps to set up warmups and cooldowns:
- Choose any of the video courses from the “Workout” or “Courses” tab (navigation bar below)
- Tap on the Warmup section underneath the workout description
- Choose any Warmup that fits your needs
- Then tap on Cooldown
- Choose any Cooldown that you want
- Then tap on the red start button when you’re ready
- Tap on Connect Equipment to pair your mobile device to your workout equipment (Don't have any of our SMART products? Don't worry you can still watch the video)
- Tap the red start button again to be pulled into a holding room where you can receive an overview of the workout and connect your heart rate device or smart watch
- Tap "Start Right Now" to get started on the Warmup portion of your workout. You’ll now notice on the video progress bar, your warmup, workout, and cooldown are sequentially ordered.
Don’t take for granted your warmups and cool downs. The SunnyFit® app makes it easy for you to make that a consistent component in any of your workouts with or without Sunny products. We want to make all our users succeed in their workouts—injury free!
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