Bring your heart rate down at an ideal pace and stretch your entire body thoroughly with this Cool Down & Total Body Stretch video.

When you bring your heart rate down slowly, you allow your body to continually flush out all of the waste products that you built up over the course of your more strenuous workout routine. Your heart gets to slow down at a gradual pace instead of coming to a sudden stop.

Cool Down: 30 Seconds of Each
Jumping Jacks
Jogging in Place
Standing Toe Touches
Side Lunges
Walking Arm Stretches

10 Minutes of Total Body Stretching
Standing Stretches – 15 Seconds Each

• Straight Leg Hang – Lock out your knees and reach for your toes. You will feel this in your hamstrings.
• Overhead Triceps Pull – Raise your arm above your head, bend at the elbow and use the opposite hand to pull it across your shoulders.
• Standing Quadriceps – Bend one leg at the knee and hold the heel of the foot against your butt. You will feel this in your quads (the front of your thighs).
• Wall Chest Stretch – Place one hand on a wall with your fingers pointed behind you. Rotate your body away from the wall until you feel it through the front of your chest.
• Inside Thigh Stretch – With feet spread wide apart, lean backward until you feel it through the inside of the thigh you are leaning away from.
• Wall Shoulder Stretch – Press both hands up against a wall at about head height. Press your chest & head down towards the floor until you feel it through the front of your shoulders.

Seated Stretches – 15 Seconds Each

• Prone Calf Stretch – Get into a push up position and put your weight into just one leg to get a good release through the calf of that supporting leg.
• Arm Cross Pull – Pull one arm across your body, using the other hand to pull the elbow for more range of movement. You will feel this in the back of your shoulder and your deltoids.
• Butterfly – Bring the soles of your feet together, bring them in towards your body and lay your legs down toward the ground.
• Three Way Hamstring – There are three different leg positions that you will use; to the outside, straight out, and angled inside, to thoroughly target the thighs and hamstrings. Repeat on both sides of the body.
• Supine Torso Twist – Lie flat on your back and rotate on the torso to lie both legs on either side of the body.
• Deep Glute Stretch – Lie on your back, bend one leg & place it across the other thigh, and then pull that straightened leg inwards in order to feel it through the leg that is crossed. This is a great exercise for back pain and avoiding sciatica.
• Cobra – Lie on your stomach and use your hands to press your upper body and core up and off of the mat. You will feel this through the front of your body.
• Shell Stretch – From the Cobra, press back so that you are on all fours. Round your back and shoulders and press your hands into the floor in order to press your shoulders down towards your hips. You will feel this one in the lower back, rhomboids and trapezius.

12 Minutes may feel like a lot of time to spend cooling down and stretching, but it’s very important to realize how important flexibility is to the overall picture of health and fitness. Strength, endurance, flexibility, weight loss, and overall health will suffer without proper attention to maintaining dexterity & elasticity of the muscles.

In other words the twelve minutes you spend doing this routine after a workout is very much time well spent.