Cooling down after intense exercise has been reported to be an active measure to decreasing lactic acid. However, these reports have involved cooling down using the same muscle groups as those used during the main exercise, and there are almost no studies investigating cooling down using different muscle groups from those used in the main exercise. The purpose of this study was to conduct exercise of the arms for cooling down the upper and lower extremities after intense exercise to clarify the effects on subsequent performance.
Subjects engaged in middle power exercise using a bicycle ergometer. With load set at 5% of body weight, arm cranking exercise was conducted for 30 seconds at 70 rpm.
Next, one of the following was performed for 20 minutes: exercise with no set conditions, exercise with cooling down of the upper extremities as a condition (load intensity: 10 watts, number of revolutions: 50 rpm), and exercise with lower extremity cooling down as a condition (load intensity: 40% of VO2max, number of revolutions: 50 rpm). Performance testing was implemented after completion of these respective exercises.
Results for mean power, peak power and total workload in performance testing were all higher when upper and lower extremity cooling down were conducted than when there were no set conditions.
The rates of decrease in lactic acid concentration after cooling down for no set conditions, upper extremity cooling down and lower extremity cooling down were -63.4±9.0%, -73.3±5.8% and -75.4±7.3%, respectively.
Results demonstrated that in terms of methods of cooling down after exercise mainly using the arms, there was no marked difference observed between cooling down of the upper extremities using the same muscles as those in the main exercise, and cooling down of the lower extremities. Furthermore, both of the methods promoted the rise and subsequent fall of lactic acid concentration and were effective for later performance.
