Warming And Cooling Off helps Muscles-Heart rhythm- streching-bending-excercises

WARMING UP AND COOLING OFF

Any time you are going to work out hard-when you have reached the stage where that is advisable as well as appealing to you-it is important warm up gradually first. Light warm-up-easy stretching, bending, I wishing, slow running in place-limbers up the muscles, prepares the heart and lung for exertion, and tunes up the nervous system. 

There is some controversy among athletic coaches as to whether warming up ever actually improves athletic performance, but there is evidence that it is valuable as a safety measure, a means of reducing risk of injury. As important as warming up at the beginning of a hard workout is tapering off properly afterward. During active exercising, the heart pumps blood out faster to keep the muscles supplied. And the muscles, HI they contract, produce a kind of pumping action on the veins that helps return blood to the heart and lungs.

 If you stop exercising suddenly, the heart will continue for a while to pump extra blood but the muscles, especially those in the legs, no longer dive, no longer squeeze on the veins. As a result, some pooling of blood may occur in the muscles, causing a temporary shortage elsewhere in the body, making you feel faint. Also, it appears that cramps and stiff- ness are less likely to develop if you taper off. To taper off, just keep moving about, in relaxed fashion. Instead of sitting down, walk about, lazily bend and stretch.

A few minutes of this will suffice. Do not rush into a hot tub or shower immediately after a workout or even after tapering off. Give yourself another 5 to 10 minutes to cool off. You need this time to radiate some of the heat you have worked up. If you jump right into a tub or shower, your body temperature will be above normal and the hot water will impede heat dissipation, so you will come out of the bath still sweating. 

ISO METRICS VERSUS ISOTONICS

ISO METRICS VERSUS ISOTONICS

For some years, the virtues of isometrics have been trumpeted, often in advertising which promises an isometric system that "will put you in top shape in a minute a day-and no sweat." Isometrics involve muscular contractions without movement. The sys- tem is based on the principle that when a muscle is required to work beyond its usual intensity, it will grow. In isometrics, one set of muscles may be pitted against another or against an immovable object such as a doorway or floor. 

Put your palms together and push your hands against each other as hard as you can, without moving either hand. Or push against a closed door which does not move. These are isometrics. On the other hand, isotonic involve movement. Running, lifting, push-ups, sit-ups, virtually all sports are isotonic. Isometric exercises can be useful-for example, in correcting specific deficiencies such as building arm muscles or putting back into condition a leg that has been in a cast.

They may be useful, too, as a supplement to isotonic for further development of specific major muscles and muscle areas. But it is important to realize that your objective in exercising is not simply to build muscular strength. Strength is the ability to work against a resistance. Additionally, you need muscular endurance, the ability of a muscle to respond repetitively for a relatively long period of time; flexibility or muscular elasticity so you can use the muscle effectively throughout its whole range of motion; and cardiovascular-pulmonary efficiency-the adaptive response of heart, blood vessels; and lungs to work and exercise. 

Isometrics can help develop strength. But for the other needs, you have to get down on the floor and do push-ups and sit-ups and other isotonic exercise; you have to walk and jog or swim; you have to work the muscles through their whole range and work them repeatedly; and you have to sweat at the job and give the heart and blood vessels and lungs a workout. There is no shortcut.