Life is full of ups and downs, isn’t it? This is especially true for your fitness journey.

Long term, we want to increase mobility and strength, while decreasing the occurrence of injury. We also focus on ways to keep you up and moving each day, and not down on your ass or down and immobilized by pain. On a micro level, the ups and downs of each exercise are how we practice form and create the opportunity to strengthen our bodies. Zooming out a bit, injury prevention not only requires increasing functional mobility (where the delicate balance between strength and flexibility meet) and correcting muscular imbalances but also a period of restoration (down-time). This is a continuous process of breaking d-o-w-n muscle fibers, tissue, and yes, even your immune system in order to build u-p those very same things. As I mentioned in my Home Workout blog, all works outs need to consist of these ups and downs, including warm-UPs, and cool-DOWNS.

Cool-downs are a part of a bigger process of recovery. Here is some news that may be a bit counterintuitive – you don’t actually build strength while you work out, that happens during recovery. Due to this very counterintuitive reason, recovery is essential because as Dr. John Rusin puts it, “if your training program drives you down into the ground beyond your ability to repair with volumes, intensities, frequencies, or methodology, well, then that is a mismatch for you, your goals and your needs”. Essentially, if you don’t have enough opportunity for repair and recovery during your rest time, the long term goal of increasing mobility and strength is obsolete, and your chances of injury will increase. The complete opposite of what we are going for.

I want to emphasize that specific recovery needs really depend on your unique workout regiment, as well as your unique capabilities – specific injuries require specific workouts AND specific kinds of recovery. With that said, all post-workout recovery plans do require hydration, sleep, and nutrition. Dr. Rusin also adds that “recovery is never passive – you must actively help your nervous system move from the mobility of the sympathetic nervous system during workouts into the safety and rest of the parasympathetic nervous system”. In order to activate this recovery process, your cool-down should include myofascial release, stretching, mobility drills, and breathwork.

Breathwork? Yes, breathwork. Proper breathing isn’t just to help you push through those last two reps, or improving your lung function, it’s also one of the key features in helping your nervous system transition into parasympathetic recovery. This deep breathing, usually promoted by breathing in through your nose, and out through your mouth, instantly lowers stress responses associated with the mobilized “fight-or-flight” mechanism of the sympathetic system, and activates the process of repair, reducing stress and inflammation. Meditation is one way of practicing this type of breathing, but you can also do this between high-intensity periods within your workout; this will help your heart rate return back to normal, which is a fancy way of saying that diaphragmatic breathing during the workout and post-workout phases, ups your endurance, allowing you to run that extra mile and do those few extra reps. It also helps your heart and lungs keep up with your new, improved, badass self.

Last, but not least, and definitely first before your workout… comes the warm-up. I get we are being a bit counterintuitive throughout this blog, but that’s the nature of the game, it’s cyclical, and in order to go up, you must come down… and so on and so forth. Cool-downs and recovery periods are really important, for a number of reasons, but not all warm-ups are created equal (or cool-downs for that matter). Most fitness professionals make sure you warm-up, but I have slowly over time, been adjusting my perspective regarding what would best serve my clients and the best use of our time together. When your body becomes accustomed to the same warm-up routine, it no longer becomes as effective in well, warming you up. So we end up wasting time warming up for a workout we have now surpassed with our training – that IS counterintuitive and counterproductive! The same warm-up also leads to autopilot, which removes that mind/body connection we are looking for to solidify proper form within each movement of your workout, even within the warm-up itself. Warming up on autopilot is not really good for you, me (because that would mean I was sucking at my job), or your fitness goals. We want to stay engaged in movement execution, preventing injuries, and we want to stay connected, maximizing our time together. Autopiloting removes these essential parts of an effective and efficient warm-up. Let’s just make a mental note to not do this, OK?

Speaking of maximizing our time together, I want to introduce you (if you’re not already familiar) to the dynamic warm-up process, which is an effective and efficient way to emphasize form and function right from the start of your workout. Now, this is probably going to surprise some of you (including some trainers), but a warm-up needs to primarily address problem areas or trigger points in either your body or in your movement patterns rather than “warming up” your entire body. For this reason, a warm-up with someone doing rehabilitation training is probably going to take longer than the 10-minute warm-up I plan with a client that doesn’t have a history of, or current issues with, pain or injury. Over time, you will notice that we can’t always allow our instinctive movements and mindsets to take over our fitness and changing lifestyle habits. I know, counterintuitive as fuck, but that’s pretty much the point. Your body and mind can most definitely fuck things up for your workouts unless you pay attention and stay mindful of exactly how you are moving each step of the way. Warm-ups are a great catalyst to bring your attention to this need, highlighting all the beneficial aspects of corrective training from day one.

This is why warm-ups continue to be a key element in any workout routine, but they really do need to be distinguished from the cool-down and recovery component. Both warm-ups and cool-downs are essential for building endurance, preventing injury, and developing form and function, but in very different ways. Warm-ups focus on problem areas in tissue, movement, form, and function, while cool-downs reset your body and nervous system into a place of safety and rest so that your muscles and tissue can repair (and bones can become denser and stronger as well). Another way to look at this is warm-ups address existing injury and pain versus cool-downs that address injury prevention. It’s an injury prevention workout sandwich. Just like a sandwich, the stuff in the middle tends to fall out and get messy unless you have two hearty pieces of support on either side. When you don’t use the correct warm-up protocols geared toward your specific needs, or properly cool down and recover, you are creating a great deal of extra work in reaching any of your fitness goals.

One more time for the people in the back row – your workouts don’t mean jack-shit unless you are putting into practice dynamic warm-ups and true support, repair, and restoration. Balance matters, in all things in life – things that go up, must come down, after all.

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