Warm up and cool down activities are important to prevent damage to your muscles. Your muscles can get really sore.

Damage to your muscles from improper warm up and cool down can prevent you from exercising for several days while the soreness goes away and you lose "training" that you had previously gained. Worse still, some get so discouraged that they just don't get back to starting exercising again.

Walking will do for both warm up and cool down - but slowly - and for at least 5 minutes both before and after exercising.

For those who want to maximize their performance and overall health, stretching exercises are even more helpful.

Any good exercise book will have a set of stretching exercises for you to copy but if you have trouble getting a set of good stretching exercises, email Ron Peterson at [email protected] and give me your mailing address and I will send you a copy of what I use. I was given the exercises many years ago by exercise people at the national jewish hospital in Denver and they are very good.

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