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Warming Up and Cooling Down For Maximum Fat Burning

By Ingo Loge

How long should I warm up? Why should I warm up? What is a cool down? Okay, if you have wanted to know the answers to these and other questions, let’s read on down the page. You will need to spend the first 8-15 minutes of your training session asking your body to produce energy slowly.

The more gradually you bring your heart rate up, the richer in fat your fuel source will be. Remember that you need your body to produce energy at a non-emergency rate, this triggers the body to get its energy from fat. When you demand your body produce energy suddenly, it will get its energy from sugar. Your body stores sugar, the fuel of choice, for igniting emergency responses in the blood or as glycogen in the muscle and liver.

You see, your anaerobic, fast twitch sugar burning muscle fibers have immediate access to these sugar stores and use them to fuel flight or fight activity. On the other hand, your body has a much different system for storing the fat as a peacetime fuel. It locks it away in storage vaults far from the muscles. Since your aerobic, slow twitch fat burning muscle fibers produce energy in a controlled, deliberate manner, there is no need to keep fat reserves in a state of alert. Fat that is not immediately needed for energy is put away for long term storage.

And all of us know where that is on our bodies -- right! Okay, to get at this “gas” or fat, your body must go through a “fat mobilization” process before its fat stores can be converted into energy by the aerobic, slow twitch fat burning muscles fibers. Mobilizing fat involves a sequence of events that transforms stored body fat into free form fatty acids, which are carried by the blood, to the aerobic slow twitch fat burning muscle fibers.

It takes between 8 and 15 minutes for your body to mobilize, heat up or kindle. Giving your body time to transform its out–of-the-way fat stores into a utilizable fuel can be one of the most effective strategies for ensuring a greater reliance on fat as a energy source during your workout and throughout the day.

The cool down is simply the warm up in reverse. Most people I see in the gym today skip this portion of the workout. You see, the cool down helps your body transition from an active state into a more sedentary one. The cool down lets your body redirect the flow of blood away from the large working muscles and back to the internal organs and brain. You probably did not know this but your body shifts blood by expanding the blood vessels in the larger working muscles involved in the motion of constricting the blood vessels in muscle groups and organs that are not immediately needed.

This is how your body delivers more oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to the muscles that need it. Spent blood is oxygen depleted blood and full of toxic by-products such as lactic acid and carbon dioxide.. The faster you get rid of these by-products, the better you will feel. What does all that mean? Cool down!

The best way to facilitate the removal of potentially irritating blood is to mechanically pump it out by gently moving the muscles in the same motion you just did (cooling down at a steady, decreasing pace). Your warm up and cool down times should be about the same, depending on the intensity of your cardio c-quence on that day. I know what you are saying, ”I don’t have the time for this”! But I say it is so worth it.

You’ll feel better as you get into your training session and you will dramatically reduce the prospects of getting stiff, tight and sore at the end. You may even look forward to your next training sessions because you will be certain that they can make you feel great and that is an outcome we are all wanting and looking for isn’t it?

For a better explanation of this go out and buy Covert Baileys book Smart Exercise, it is in paperback and cost is around $9.00 or so. And as always, "smart Fitnss And Nutritional Solutions That Work"

About the Author:

Ingo Loge Is an Exercise Physiologist Clinical Nutritionist, Chek Practitioner and the owner Of Fitness Forever Personal Training In Palm Desert, Ca. He Can Be Reached At www.MyFitness4ever.com or