Health – Warming Down

A good warm down, like a warm up, is key for a footballer wishing to remain injury free for prolonged periods of time. Often overlooked by many players, a warm down is meant to allow the body to gradually transition from an intensive exercise state to a rest state thus avoiding injury, muscle stiffness and tiredness. A warm down is essential and should be practiced by football players of all age groups.

A warm down helps remove waste products accumulated in the muscles during exercises – like lactic acid. Additionally, it helps gradually cool down the body, decrease the blood pressure and heart rate and it helps release hormones that act against adrenaline – which helps make you less restless after a game.

A warm down is also a good time to work on joint flexibility as the tissues are warm right after a match and will be easily manipulated during stretching exercise.

Professional football teams are in recent times paying particular attention to warm downs as their players are required to play multiple matches in short periods of time and warm downs have been shown to significantly improve recovery time after matches and training. Research has shown that players participating in warm down sessions following matches and training sessions on average recover quicker than players that don’t participate in warm down sessions.

Players are often allowed to neglect a warm down session due to bad weather conditions – rain, snow, wind – but this should not be the case. Part of a warm down can be done indoors – like inside a gym – if necessary.

Approximately 10 minutes of exercise should be sufficient for a warm down. The exercise should decrease in intensity as the time runs down.

A warm down should constitute of a hard paced run which slowly turns into a jog, finishing with a quick paced walk. This should be followed up by static muscle stretching – paying particular attention to muscles that suffer extensive strain in football matches like the hamstring, calf and lower back muscles.

The warm down session should be completed with a slow-paced 2 minute jog, while kicking arms and legs to further relax your muscles.

This slow decrease in exercise intensity helps lower the heart rate and body temperature gradually thus avoiding a sudden cessation of physical activity that can actually force the heart to work harder initially. A gradual decrease of heart rate reduces stress on the organ.

By properly warming up and warming down before and after games and training, players are able to concentrate on their skills during the game and avoid most niggling injuries that can be difficult to get rid of and can have a detrimental effect on their footballing development in the long run.

As players play more games and play games more frequently, they should pay more attention to every aspect of the game – that includes taking good care of their body with warm ups and warm downs before and after strenuous exercise.