5. Linking a warm up, exercise component and cool down to different activities

March 11, 2025

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This video gives you a few tips on how to do a warm up and cool down when participating in various activities.

These activities range from housework, gardening & walking to cycling and swimming.

Transcript

Warm up and cool down for different exercises

Linking exercises to warm up, exercise component, and cooling down, and more like different activities.

Housework

So let’s think first of all about housework. Housework can be a form of exercise so your warm up is going to be going around the house tidying things up, putting things away, emptying the rubbish bins. Then your actual exercise is going to start building up from dusting and polishing,
actually into the cleaning. And you know you will definitely be exercising when you’re cleaning the bath, the kitchen, hoovering, mopping floors and you are going to get warm, hot and sweaty.

By the end of the session do make sure you just do a little mini cool stretches and leg stretches that we do in class. You are going to be reaching up and doing things and remembering to stretch out your triceps, your shoulders, your back, all of those stretches and the legs. So you really should do that after housework. But definitely if you’ve really put some good oomph into it, you can calculate that as part of your 150 minutes of exercise every week.

Gardening

Similar thing for gardening. So what you’re going to do, you’re going to go out into your garden, you’re going to walk around and work out ‘What do I need to do today?’ Just strolling around. If it’s in the summer, you might be doing some dead heading. You might be doing a bit of weeding. That sort of thing. Then you’re going to do maybe potting things up and your actual exercise, digging, mowing the lawn. In the autumn, you’ll probably find yourself brushing the patio, sweeping it, raking up leaves, lifting heavy pots, digging. Those of you with the allotments, it’s carrying water to water all your plants and then just turning over the soil and everything, preparing all of your beds for all your different fruit, vegetables and everything you’re growing on your allotment.

And again, after gardening for quite a lot of you, you’re going to be out there for hours. You’re going to be getting down onto your knees, you’re reaching, you’re leaning. You need to do a great deal of stretching when you do come in. Have regular breaks, stretch out all those leg muscles, the thighs, the backs of the legs, your buttocks, your back and all your upper arms. And then you will feel so much better the next day.

Walking – A to B, e.g. to the shops and back

Most of you will be going out for a walk, so if you’re walking, your warm up is just going to be, normally if you’re going from home to the shops, you’ve got to get your shoes on. In the winter, you’ve got to get your coat on. You’ve probably forgotten something and gone back upstairs or gone into the kitchen to get it. So rarely you’re ever going to go from your chair and then walk out the door. So you’ve probably done a bit of a warm up.

So just start walking a bit slower, gradually increase your pace and if you can get to a brisk pace because anything. Low to moderate pace is going to be classified as activity, whereas walking at a brisk pace involving heels is going to be classified as exercise.

So you’re going to start off slowly, gradually increase your pace as you get to your destination. Then you can start slowing down. So say you’ll go into the shops, you’ve gone out your house, you’ve done a good walk there. You slow down. You’re going to be walking around the shops. Ideally you’re going to be buying things. You’re going to be laden down with bags or rucksacks. On your way back you’re having to put a little bit more effort in.

Again, start a bit slower, increase your pace and then slow it down as you get towards your house. It’s one of those things again, you’re not going to literally walk in the door and stop and sit down. So you are going to do a bit of a cool down you’re going to put your bag down, you’re going to empty it, you’re going to take your coat off, take your shoes off, but if you have given it a little bit of oomph, do stretch out your legs and maybe you’ve been carrying anything heavy really mobilise all your shoulders and things like that. And so that’s how you just do a general walk from A to B.

Walking – a purposeful walk

Then if you want to go for a proper walk. So if you’re determined you’re going to go and drive somewhere. So Box Hill, those of you in Surrey, that is my example. You drive to the bottom of Box Hill, you’re not driving to the top, you’re driving to the bottom and you park at the bottom. Now one thing you must never do is just get out of your car and start walking up a hill. We don’t want to do that. Even if you live on a hill, you’ve got to try and walk down the hill first. Because that will just raise your heart rate and blood pressure too quickly.

So you need to then walk around the flat in the car park just to start with. Once you’ve done more of a warm up, you’re then going to start to walk up your hill. Now if it is a steep hill like Box Hill, then you’re just going to take it in little increments. There are great places you can stop and look at the vista. But do keep your feet moving. If you really need to sit down to catch your breath, just wiggle your toes and then continue when you can.

When you get to the top enjoy whatever it is, do slow down don’t just go huffing and puffing and then just go and lie down or something like that. Please just walk until you feel that you’ve calmed down, your heart rates calmed down, and then you’re not huffing and puffing.

When you do come down, if you’ve got dodgy knees, I know it sounds a bit strange, but zigzag a little bit and that just then doesn’t put too much pressure through your knee if you’re coming down straight. I don’t care what I look like, but you may feel that zigzagging is not quite for you. But you’re exercising still quite a lot by coming down a hill.

So once you get back to your car in the car park, don’t again just get in your car, drive off, please walk around on the flat again until you feel you’ve calmed down. And ideally, I would love you to do all the leg stretches, all of those that we gave you in class. So you’re going to stretch out your calf muscle. That’s the big stride forward. You bend the front knee, back leg is straight and heel is on the floor. You’re going to do the back of the leg. So you might perch yourself on the back on the edge of your chair, one leg straight in front of you, lean over nice and straight and feel a stretch from your bottom down the back of the leg. And then you’re going to hold on to something, you’re going to grab hold of your foot and you’re going to stretch out the front of your thigh for your quadricep stretch.

So if you really have gone for a purposeful walk, even if it is on the flat, please do your leg stretches afterwards.

Cycling

It’s a similar thing if you cycle again, you’re not just going to get out of your house and get on your bike instantly and go. You’ve got to go and get your bike. You’ve got to get the shoes on your helmet on, and again, just start off slowly, gradually increase your pace. Try not to do a hill too soon, but if your are on a hill, get yourself down into a lower gear. You want to feel like you’re exercising. You’re definitely going to get huffy and puffy, that is fine. But if it’s too much, stop. Get off your bike and walk. But if you do get to the top, it is normally either flat or downhill so you’ve got time to recover. So just be sensible with it. Please make sure you do stretch out your legs, especially your thighs after cycling. Again, don’t just stop when you get to your destination, walk around. Calm yourself down until you get back to your nice natural resting rhythm of heart. And breathing.

Racquet sports

Now if you’re going to do something like a racquet sport, you’re going to warm up as you would play in that racquet sport. So if you’re going to play badminton, tennis, so you’re not expected to do toe tapping and arms all out the place, you’re going to move directions, you’re going to move backwards and forwards. You’re going to just do knocking up. So you’re going to be using the body and it’s nice and easy just to get it all flowing, a good warm up again. And at the end of your session, stretch all those muscles. So again, you’ve been reaching with your arms, you’ve been twisting, your legs have been working. So your whole body needs a good stretch.

Football

It’s a similar thing if it’s like football, you’re going to mimic all your kicking, changing directions.

Pilates, Tai Chi, Yoga

If you do something like Pilates, Tai chi and Yoga, you would normally do a good warm up and cool down a stretch at the end.

Community classes, e.g. Zumba

Please do make sure that if you do decide to go and join an exercise class in the community, the warm up may be two minutes, 5 minutes, cool down two, five again if that. If it is a specific older adult class, you should then definitely get a longer warm up. But you know how important your warm up and cool down is, so do get to the venue early. Walk around, start doing your warm up before they do theirs, and then you know you’ve done a long enough warm up and it is safe for you. A similar thing for the cooldown, you just take that bit longer, you stay in the venue a little bit more, you walk around the studio or you just go outside, walk a bit more than do your stretches. So just be aware of that. The community classes may not do a long enough warm up and cool down.

Swimming

Now one other thing you may do is swimming. Now some of you will be allowed to go back and swim, some of you not. Most of you will have driven to the swimming pool if you have ridden your bike or walked and you haven’t had too much of a break in between getting there and getting changed into the pool and then you’ve done a bit more of your warm up. But otherwise most of you get in cold.

Do have that shower before you get in so then it’s not too much of a shock as you enter the swimming pool, you’re going to slowly get yourself in to the swimming pool into the shallow end and you’re just going to mobilise. So just stand in the shallow end. If you want to dip yourself under do. But do realise that does actually raise your heart rate and blood pressure without you knowing. So if you can do it just submerge to maybe waist that would be better. Mobilise your shoulders, mimic your breaststroke, mimic your front crawl. Kick your legs around, move your legs around. Do some walking on the spot, marching on the spot, then gradually submerge yourself. Stay close to the side and just start swimming really slowly.
Then as you gradually warm up, then you can start pushing yourself a bit more. But please be really careful in water.

When you are swimming and you’re thinking of your RPE scale, you may think, oh, this is RPE 11, this is really light, I’m going for a real easy swim. But actually your heart and your blood pressure have increased so much more because of the water pressure around your organs. So without you realising it, because you’ve got water all around your senses. All in your skin you don’t know you’re actually working harder than you are you don’t get the right responses so it’s very important if you think you’re working at RPE 11, you are actually working at RPE 13 so you’re working at that somewhat hard. So if you think you’re working at somewhat hard, so you’re a bit breathless you know your muscles are working you are actually working at RPE 14 to 15, which is that hard to hard heavy which is your cut off. So when you are in a swimming pool, please make sure you only work at RPE 13. Just be aware of that.

Once you finish your swimming session you’re going to come back to the shallow end. Ideally do stretches while you’re in the pool. So all the leg stretches, all the arm stretches, you could do it if you want to in the changing rooms but don’t wait till you get home because you will be a lot cooler by then. Wouldn’t say do it in the shower just in case you slipped and things like that. And just if you’re really not sure, always swim on the side of the pool so you can always grab the side if you need to stop at any time.

If you are interested in swimming, please make sure you do check with your cardiac rehab team if you are allowed to swim because certain heart conditions we do advise that you don’t swim.

I hope that all helps where you can just link different activities with your warm up, your cool down and remember to stretch as well.

Join us at Cardiac Lauren to learn how to do a safe warm up and cool down.

Extra information

4. The Importance of the Warm-Up, Exercise Component and Cool Down

June 4, 2024

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Find out why the warm-up is so important when exercising. Understand what we mean by the exercise component and Lauren explains why the cool-down section is vital after an exercise session.

Below is the script for the video so if you are unable to watch it the information is below.

The Warm-Up for Cardiac Patients.

The warm-up must last a minimum of 15 minutes. There are lots of reasons for this, so first of all, it prepares the body for exercise by slowly increasing your heart rate and blood pressure in a nice, safe and graduated way.

We warm up nice and slowly so you’ll see that we only start with the legs to start with. We might do a few little stretches and then we start pulse-raising as we start doing our movements bigger and bigger and start involving the arms, so by the end of the warm-up you are ready to do your exercise session.

Once we start our warm-up, our body is doing all these amazing things and it’s starting to redistribute the blood to your working muscles. This is why we tell you not to exercise too close to having a meal, especially a large meal because what would happen is your stomach has just received all the food, it needs a really good blood supply to digest the food and if you got up and started going and exercising, your muscles will request that blood supply instead. They win out and so that’s why you are likely to get stomach cramps and feel quite ill if you’ve just eaten.

Those of you who go for a walk, have a pub lunch and then continue your walk, please give yourself a nice length of time between finishing your meal and continuing with your walk.

Another reason why we warm up is that it increases the blood flow to the heart muscle and that is really important because obviously, your heart needs a good blood supply. And with that, it dilates all the arteries. Your heart has got all the arteries around it and they start to widen and dilate and therefore the heart actually gets a really good blood supply. If we do a warm-up in a nice gradual manner, then the heart isn’t shocked into exercising.

When we warm up, you are also increasing your breathing rate and we want to do that again in a nice, safe and gradual manner.

You will get warm. That is one of the side effects of exercising. You will warm up, you will start to sweat. So you do have to make sure that you are in a nicely ventilated area. And if you do sweat a lot, you stay hydrated and you may need to have a towel with you.

When you’re warming up and we’re moving the joints around, so think about the shoulder, by moving it around, we’re promoting the release of something called synovial fluid. Think of it as your WD40 for your joints and that is trying to just lubricate the end of your joints. They will then move a little bit smoother. I know a lot of you have got osteoarthritis and you’re thinking that doesn’t happen to me, but that is the process of doing a warm-up.

We’re also really trying to focus the mind on what we’re doing. So our warm-up should mimic what we are going to do in our exercise session. So there’s no point in toe-tapping and lifting your knees and doing all these things if all you’re going to do is for a walk. But you can’t just go for a walk and expect to be warm enough and ready enough to do a circuit class, so do make sure your warm-up mimics what you’re going to do.

And the last thing, as we’ve mentioned in a few other videos, if you do a warm-up, you’re more likely to increase the threshold of getting angina, so then you shouldn’t have any problems exercising.

The Exercise Component

The exercise component of a session should last for at least 20 minutes and 30 minutes is good, but you don’t really need to push it any more than an hour. You can, but you don’t get as many benefits as just sneaking in all your exercise into between 20 and 60 minutes.

Now what we’re trying to do is to get you to raise your heart rate within your training zone. Some of you will have had your heart rate calculated so you know where your heart rate should be. Based on your age, the medicines you’re on, and your fitness level, most of us will be using the RPE scale, that rating of perceived exertion, and we want to be working between RPE 11 and 14, ideally at 13, which is classified as somewhat hard.

Now over time, you are going to get fitter, your muscles are going to adapt to a lot of the exercises, so you need to make sure that when the exercise starts to become a little bit easier, you then need to either increase the intensity, the range of movement, the length of time, or just putting that little bit more oomph into it or carrying a heavier weight.

So you need to just always feel that you’re pushing yourself just that little bit more.

Preferably the exercises need to be cardiovascular, getting your heart and lungs going, you can involve weights as well, but try and make sure that the majority of the exercises you do are cardiovascular.

The Cool-Down

The cool-down part of an exercise session is vital and so many people miss this bit out and you can be very ill and unwell at the end of an exercise session if you don’t cool down. It is just, and if not more, important than the warm-up.

Please note that you should never just stop your exercise and just sit down and leave it like that. That is a big no. You are going to feel unwell, especially if you’re on tablets for you have angina. If you need to sit down, then make sure you move your feet and that just basically keeps your calf muscles pumping and that works as your calf pump.

The calf pump helps get the blood from your feet back up to your heart and your head so you’re less likely to get lightheaded, dizzy, and possibly faint.

Just keep your feet moving.

Your cool-down needs to last a minimum of 10 minutes and it is essential.

What we’re trying to achieve is to gradually bring your heart rate and your blood pressure back down to normal resting levels and that takes a bit of time. You will find after a few minutes you’re no longer huffing and puffing, you don’t feel like your heart is racing and you will feel a lot better.

In terms of your heart rate, our aim is to get it back to within 10 beats of what it was when you first started your exercise, 10 beats off your resting rate.

And then your blood pressure will also start to come down, and that just needs to be gradual.

What was the easiest way to do all this? During the cool-down just walk around. Finish your exercise, walk around your room or the garden, if you’re playing badminton or tennis, walk around the court if you’re in the gym get yourself back onto the treadmill or just walk around the gym and you’ll be surprised how quickly you will start to recover.

Now, one of the other reasons why a cool-down is important is that we need to remove the circulating catecholamines from the bloodstream.

Now catecholamines are waste products from exercise and one that you have heard about is adrenaline. Adrenaline is wonderful for during exercise as it makes your heart pump harder, and faster and it’s perfect to get us going while we’re exercising, but we really don’t need that in the bloodstream whilst we are cooling down and so our body will start reabsorbing it, just getting ourselves back to our normal pace, our normal heart rhythm, just nice and slowly after exercising.

So it’s really important you reduce those circulating catecholamines because they can actually increase the risk of you getting an arrhythmia which is an irregular heartbeat.

There is, at the end of the cooldown or the end of the exercise session, a risk that you feel lightheaded, dizzy or actually faint if the blood pools in your legs and you’re going to become hypotensive, low blood pressure, again keep your feet moving virtually to the end of the cooldown, for the full 10 minutes.

We really encourage people to stretch at the end of an exercise session, and that is important because the muscles are warm and they really like being stretched when they’re warm.

Every time you’ve done an exercise, your muscles have been shortening to give you that force that you need, and if you never stretch and lengthen them back to the state they’re supposed to be, they’re going to just become dull, heavy, achy, and you’re more inclined to get cramp. And then you’re more inclined to get aches and pains and possibly injuries because your muscles haven’t been stretched back to the right length.

You will, at the end of your 10 minutes, probably still feel warm, hot, and sweaty, but you should feel that you have fully recovered from the exercise session.

I hope that helps explain the importance of a warm-up and cool-down in Phase 4 Cardiac Rehabilitation exercise classes. Lauren uses the same format of warm-up in her face-to-face classes.

Come and enjoy the classes with Cardiac Lauren!

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3. The benefits of regular activity and exercise on the body

November 9, 2023

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Watch to learn about the many of the benefits of exercise on our body. These are benefits for everyone and not just cardiac patients.

2. What is the difference between physical activity, exercise and fitness?

October 19, 2023

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This video explains what the difference is between physical activity, physical exercise and physical fitness. It also explains the different components of fitness.

1. Why you should be active and exercising regularly

October 5, 2023

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This short video explains why being active and exercising regularly can help you stay healthy and reduce the risk of developing a number of medical conditions.

Below is the script for the video so if you are unable to watch it the information is below.

Be Active and Exercising Regularly

In cardiac rehabilitation, we always try to encourage you to be more active in your everyday life and participate in regular cardiovascular exercise as often as possible.

This is because we are trying to help you reduce your risk of developing a range of other medical conditions which include coronary heart disease, hypertension (which is high blood pressure to you and me) high cholesterol, stroke (including TIA’s), diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, and some cancers (breast and colon cancer).

Exercising benefits

Exercising regularly, which means getting your heart and your lungs going on a regular basis is good for you for many reasons.

It helps increase your fitness and stamina levels.
When you exercise more, you are going to increase your muscle bulk.
Being active helps with the activities in your daily living.
You don’t have to think about doing things, you just start doing the housework or making the bed, weeding the garden or taking the bins out, or even small DIY projects.
It is going to help increase your metabolic rate and that means that you are going start burning all your internal fat when we get you exercising.
I am going to get you moving your arms and your legs in all different directions so that improves your range of movement around your joint. This means you are able to pick up and lift things easier or even get your arm in your coat or jumper more easily.
By moving more regularly, stretching, and getting the joint working as it should means you are less likely to continue with those aches, pains, niggles, and things like that.

Cardiac Lauren exercise at home - be active and exercising for your health

More reasons for being active and exercising

There are more good reasons of why we try and get you exercising and be more active.

When you exercise, you get this hormone release, these endorphins, that feel good factor, serotonin starts going round to your body and so you feel really good after exercise and that is what motivates you to keep going, get out of that chair, start mowing of the lawn and things like that.

When you exercise more regularly, your confidence improves as well. You are also reducing your anxiety and stress levels.

You have better weight control when you exercise more regularly and what I mean by that is that you gain good kilos, so muscle around your body, and you lose bad kilos, which is fat and things like that around your body.

You have less fatigue and you are more likely to have a better sleep pattern because you are physically tired at the end of the day.

So they are just some of the reasons, I really could be here all day talking, about why exercise and activity is good for you. But that just gives you an idea of why we try and promote activity, general exercise, and get the heart and the lungs going on a regular basis.

Cardiac Lauren & being active and exercising

In Cardiac Lauren there is a large range of different themed and intensity level classes which cater for a beginner all the way to a regular exerciser. Being active and exercising is important to maintain our health and keep the body moving so we work on strength, mobility and balance as well as cardiovascular exercises.