Warming up and cooling down reduces your chance of injury by helping your body prepare for and recover from exercise. Though essential to every exercise program, the warm-up and cool down phases are often neglected. Follow these steps for a safe exercise session. Begin with five minutes of slow, large movements such as arm swinging and slow walking to warm muscles and raise your heart rate this is especially important if you're doing an early morning workout.

Continue to warm the muscles and joints by doing some slow static stretching for about five minutes. Stretch until you feel some tension then hold for 15-30 seconds. Change positions slowly and never bounce. Stretch the neck, shoulders, arms, trunk, hips, quadriceps, hamstrings and calves. Be sure to include some exercise-specific stretches.

Begin the exercise or "stimulus" phase of your exercise session and gradually build up intensity. Gradually decrease your exercise intensity during cool-down. Walk around for a few minutes until your breathing and heart rate return to normal. Repeat the same stretches you did in the warm-up phase. Cool down stretches also help reduce muscle soreness and increase flexibility. This phase of the warm up consists of 5 to 15 minutes of light physical activity. The aim here is to elevate the heart rate and respiratory rate, increase blood flow and increase muscle temperature. Next, 5 to 15 minutes of gentle static stretching should be used to gradually lengthen all the major muscle groups and associated tendons of the body.

During this phase of the warm up, 10 to 15 minutes of sport specific drills and exercises should be used to prepare the athlete for the specific demands of their chosen sport. Dynamic stretching involves a controlled, soft bounce or swinging motion to force a particular body part past its usual range of movement. The force of the bounce or swing is gradually increased but should never become radical or uncontrolled. For more details visit http://www.soundbodytrainer.com/