Discussion: Cool down debunked.

Here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/health/nutrition...

The NY Times is not a scientific journal

If it is on the internet it must be true !!!

Actually, if anyone read the article, including Mr. Magill, it particuliarly addresses the post effort soreness and inflammation issue by quoting a study. Admittedly the study was not on top coaches and athletes, and one could say that walking backwards is not a 100% effort, but I think the idea was that it was a 100% effort for those doing it and that particuliar muscle group, ie ,most people do not walk backwards.
Anyway, as it says, no harm done either way, I certainly can't think of any logical reason it would be beneficial to running muscles once one loses the lactic acid theory.

H+

There's a lot more crap in your legs than lactic acid at the end of a hard run; particularly if it was a long one (e.g., a marathon) where you are nowhere near 100% effort, but the legs are toast by the end.

As for studies, I've done my own empirical studies under relatively controlled conditions and found that for any race over an hour, a long cool-down (30 minutes or more) makes a huge difference in recovery time if I have reached my limits near the end of the race. In events like orienteering where I am running below my phyiscal capacity in order to navigate, a cool-down makes no difference.

I find eating ice cream post races and interval sessions does wonders as a cool down

My ~half lifetime of a poorly controlled, but large sample size experiment says I feel significantly better the next day after a cool down, which I would define as a combination of slow easy running, some high rpm but low effort running (striders), and stretching.
Order of perceived importance-
1. striders
2. easy running
3. stretching
For me this apllies to a broader range of effort than ebuckley describes, to include any quality training or O race, basically whenever it feels like there's any form of "crap" in my legs.

People have been describing the cool down as a slow jog or easy running. What about been on the move (ie walking) for the 30 mins post race and not jogging? Is this sufficient or if you ran during a race do you need to run/jog in the warm down.

I find that after a long run my legs are toast and joints feel tender--in that condition, I like to add another 10-12 minutes of fast walking to add a little more workout to the heart and legs without damaging the joints. This might not count as a cool-down by traditional definitions, but I've always considered a cool-down. I'd like to think this has had some value.

Walking backward on the treadmill made people sore. Having sore legs the next day would seem to be a good reason to want to cool down, that is to say, if "cooling down" is effective at reducing soreness it would be a good thing. Walking uphill slowly was unable to reduce the muscle soreness in the group with a cooldown, which doesn't prove that cooling down doesn't work, it just shows that this method of cooling down for this exercise doesn't work. Maybe a better article would have looked at ways to reduce the negative symptoms of hard exercise.

This article reminds me of an article in Time magazine that claimed exercise was ineffective for weight loss. The article explained that many studies show that exercising leads to increases in hunger or a feeling that you can reward yourself with a snack, and that people who exercise often more than make up for the calories they burn. The Time article, like this NYT snippet, seem counter intuitive especially when we have a lot of personal examples of exercise leading to weight loss and not cooling down leading to stiff calves after you get out of the car a few hours after finishing the DVOA o-marathon.

This is another example of study that seems to have placed a binary value on something that's hard to measure. It might be that everyone is sore after a particular workload, but those who cool down are less sore. If you ask them how they feel the next day, they'll all say "sore". I think this is one of those "use your personal experience to figure out what works for you" kind of things.

I'll add my opinion that perhaps the article in the NY Times is just plain wrong... It's quite a jump to conclude that warmdowns are useless with a test that involves people in average health that stress themselves in a non-standard way and do or don't feel pain afterwords...

This past weekend I composed a response to a NY Times article that suggests that using networks - LinkedIn specifically - can lead to nepotism.

While I don't consider myself a medical expert, I do have a great deal of experience with LinkedIn - and took the NYT to task about this on my blog. The author is way off base here...

http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com/archives/ny...

At least they've avoided articles with headlines like "three headed baby born in NJ"...

Well- I can think of good reasons to cool down outside of lactic acid... Obviously heart stress is one real reason and the article admits it.

But another comes from personal experience. About halfway through my first cross country season, I would get hip pain after runs. While running my muscles would relax and when they tightened back up afterward the hip would settle out of place. Instituting a simple range of motion routine into a post-run cooldown allowed the muscles to settle properly and fixed the problem almost completely. I would not be surprised if cooldowns can reduce other mechanical issues too.

Not for nothing, but if I don't cool down with at least a little walking (and preferably a slow jog/walk/stretch sequence) after a run, I just get into a bad mood. Once that happens some sort of hormone or something fires, and my body just doesn't feel the same for the rest of the day. For me, cooling down is as important as a mental transition as it is for any physical purposes.

A true virtue of orienteering (at least in my experience) is its smooth finishing experience, at least when contrasted with a lot of road races.

Two ice cold beers, one for each leg, works well.
Walk seems to help even after you cool down.

Lactic acid is only produced when you exceed your lactate threshold. What most endurance runners experience is DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), which usually peaks 48 hours after unaccustomed or longer-than-usual exercise. There is no agreed-upon scientific explanation for DOMS but it is believed to be due to the strain of repeated eccentric contractions.
Because of the repetition of the stretch-shortening cycle, after exercise our muscles tend to tighten / shorten. A cool-down such as a walk or wade will help to flush out 50% of any lactic acid (see 1st sentence above) in the first few minutes and will help to return the muscle to its normal lengthen much faster than by doing nothing.
Try this - go for a 45-minute run and do no cooldown of any sort. Then try going for a 45-minute run the next day and notice any muscle soreness.
Then, a few days later, repeat the process but have a good 20-30-min slow walk, emphasising long stretches (40-50 secs) of all the major lower body muscles, and even a cold or ice batch after the first run. Compare how you feel on your run the next day with the do-nothing approach.

I'm pretty sure lots of people on AP regularly run 45 min or more on consecutive days, with no cool down, and don't notice any soreness or fatigue. I don't think this experiment will prove much...

This is definitely something that I have noticed changes with age! I used to skip cool downs almost always, with no problems. Now that I am decidedly middle-aged I find that a cool down fast walk for 5-10 minutes after a run followed by stretching, particularly after a speed session but also after a steady run, results in much less soreness and less injury.

One wonders: if I had stretched well and cooled-down well for my first 20 years of running, would the next 20 (nearly half way through them) be less injury laden? Or does decades of running do the damage no matter what?

Cristina - I'll bet on those runs people never exceed their lactate threshold, so they're just well-conditioned runners. If they did some serious intervals you might notice a difference.
khall - you don't even need a fast walk, just a nice easy one emphasising heel-toe foot movement and long stretches. Hard to say about the 20 years. Certainly wish I'd known what I do now when I was in my 20s. Our muscles atrophy with age, that's why a basic weights program is essential to maintain lean muscle mass and bone density.
Having come off two bad ankle injuries this year and 6 weeks into a weights program, my runs are better (though still slow) than last year at the same time without doing weights.
Recovery is crucial - after a hard run have 48 hours off before the next run. Walk or cyle in between, do some upper body strength work.
And I love ice baths (or at least cold water baths - 5 mins is enough) - they cut my recovery time from 3 days to 1 day.