Monday Wellness Reflection: Warm ups and Cool downs

My partner and I chose this topic because we felt that it was a topic that almost everyone could benefit from.  Many students engage in sports or take part in some kind of exercise, so it could help improve a lot of students lives.  Me and my partner play waterloo, so we thought it was important for us to know the importance of warming up before activity, and cooling down after.  We wanted to make sure we knew also a proper warm up and cool down that was effective. Theres a lot of interesting information about warm ups and cool downs, but we learned that when you warm up theres a lot of things that take place in your body, like increasing body temperature, blood circulation, and it helps your coordination and reaction times improve that all help your body prepare to workout. We also found it interesting that when you warm up its supposed to dilate your blood vessels. Something really important about your warmups and cool downs is that its extremely important to keep hydrated before, during, and after vigorous activity.  Being dehydrated can cause you to become very lightheaded and dizzy, when our water polo team is practicing we always have big water jugs, and our coach is always constantly reminding us to drink more water.  This topic is really important to your health, because if you don't warm up its very easy to get an injury, plus your body has to work a lot harder for you to workout which can cause cramps.  Warming up prepares your body for exercise, so when you don't warm up theres a lot of things that can go wrong.  Ive noticed when I don't get a good warm up or when I'm not fully warmed up yet and we start to play, its harder for me to catch and throw because my arm muscles don't feel stretched out and its a bit painful.  Also when you don't warm up its harder for us to swim faster, which I've noticed during practice.  Its very important to cool down because if you stop working right after a workout and don't cool down, it can make you feel light headed and dizzy, also its possible for you to faint.  Cool downs help make sure your heart rate and blood pressure drop at a normal rate, because if not it could drop rapidly. Also when you stretch after a workout it reduces the buildup of lactic acid, which can cause muscle cramps and stiffness.  On a scale of one to ten I would give us a 8 because I think we covered everything very well and had a good activity, however we did fall short on time.  Even though we came short with time, I think we covered a good amount of information, and that the students benefited from our presentation.  I really liked doing this project, I think me and Sophie worked well together and our activity was fun and really interactive, when I got back to my seat, someone sitting at my desk told me that it helped wake her up.  Theres always room for improvement, but i think we did a good job overall. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/174YfI86ll-wqBeWOV-odRIM0vDHIaYrYbmOegVihlg8/edit#slide=id.gbceffb9ad_1_25