It seems like the Total Fitness Plan gets more complicated and involved by the minute sometimes, doesn’t it? Between eating the right foods at the right times, drinking enough water, increasing your metabolism, performing both aerobic exercises and anaerobic exercises, and keeping daily weight loss goals—it just doesn’t seem like there could be anything else to worry about, right? If you really want to succeed in meeting your weight loss goals, you are going to have to keep your body healthy. Injuries mean down time and that translates into a stalled (or worse!) weight loss plan. Warming up, stretching, and taking the time to properly cool down are all things that are going to keep your body healthy and free from injury.  Let's take a closer look at all three components:

Warm Up
Warm up allows your body to adjust to the exercise you are about to perform. A simple way to warm up is to gradually increase the intensity of the exercise you’re about to perform. For example, if you are jogging, instead of jogging at your full speed right out of the shoot, spend 3-5 minutes doing a light jog before you crank it up. Those few minutes are just enough to warm the body up.

Stretching
Most fitness experts recommend stretching after your brief warm up and prior to your exercises. I have never followed this formula. Instead, I make stretching a part of my cool down. I personally don’t have the time to spend an extra 15-20 minutes to do a warm up and then spend even more precious time on a stretching session. Furthermore, I have found that by doing my stretching after my exercises, I am really warmed up (o.k. I’m sweating profusely!) and my muscles are incredibly limber. As a result, I can stretch my muscles more effectively by doing them last instead of doing them before I exercise.

Regardless of when you stretch, the important point is that it’s absolutely necessary. I stretch for 15 minutes after my workouts. If you stretch after your exercises, you’ll give your body time to cool down and allow it to return to a “normal state.” Also, you will find that you will feel alot more refreshed after an intense workout by stretching. Finally, stretching reduces the soreness generally felt after working out. Now if you do stretch before you exercise, be sure to do a 5-10 minute warm up beforehand and hold each and every stretch for at least 30 seconds. Your stretching session can last as long as you like but it should never be less than 5 minutes.

Cool Down
The cool down is the last step in the exercise session and allows your body to return to its normal state. You cool down by slowly reducing the intensity of the exercise you’re doing. For example, after jogging 20 minutes (at your target heart rate of course), you would gradually reduce the intensity of your jog until you were eventually walking fast and then finally just walking. The cool down only lasts 5-10 minutes. I will continue my cool down until my heart rate monitor shows that I’m at about 50-60% of my maximum heart rate. Now for me, this means a heart rate of 100 – 112, but clearly this will vary depending on your maximum heart rate so be sure to know what that is so that you can properly cool down. In addition to reducing the intensity of my exercise, I also stretch for 15 minutes. By the time I complete my last stretch and head for the shower, my heart rate is at or slightly above my resting heart rate.

The cool down step is an essential part of your total exercise program. You’ll feel so much more refreshed after your workouts and you won’t be nearly as exhausted when you’re done exercising. When I first started exercising I skipped the cool down process and I found I was achy, even slightly nauseous, and exhausted for the rest of the day. When I started to do a cool down, which included my stretching, I was refreshed and felt great all day long so don’t skip this important step!