LRG Fitness believe that carrying out a warm up and cool down should become a habit as much as the exercise session itself.
Warm Up:
Warming up raises your body temperature and increases blood flow to the working muscles helping to prevent injury by increasing muscle elasticity and flexibility of the tendons and ligaments. In addition, a warm up helps prepare you psychologically for the upcoming exercise session.
Cool Down:
Cooling down after an exercise session helps to regulate blood flow and allows for a gradual returning to resting levels of your heart rate and breathing. You should then follow this with some stretching which may assist with delayed onset of muscular soreness (DOMS).
DOMS:
Following exercise sessions sometimes you will experience muscle soreness. This normally kicks in around 24 hrs post exercise reaching its peak after 48hrs. DOMS can affect virtually any muscle anywhere in the body and can often be a by-product of exercise especially if you are starting out a new workout programme.