How to Do a Yoga Cool Down After Running

Video Transcript

"You've just finished your daily run and it's time to cool down. Namaste. I'm Cindy Mastry and we are going to talk about how to cool down after doing running. You don't want to cool down too fast, so a good way to cool your, begin to cool your muscles while still strengthening the muscles is through a series of power flow yoga poses, such as triangle, maybe pyramid, maybe a side angle stretch. And then when you are ready to really start cooling down, you come to the floor and we come into head to knee pose, juanoshashun. So the way we do that is extend one leg out, and bring the other foot into your inner thigh. You're going to take your entirely toned butt cheek and pull it right back so that gives you a little something, a little cushion to move forward. Inhale to lengthen your spine and then as you exhale we're going to bring our chest forward. So our lower ribs are on our thigh. We don't want to round forward like this, what we want to do is bring our lower ribs forward so that they come into the thigh. In this way we can gently stretch through the hamstring which really, really tightens as you run. So when ever you run you want to make sure that you really lengthen and do a lot of stretching for your hamstrings. With each inhalation you lengthen, with each exhalation you come down a little deeper, trying to get your nose towards more to your toes then to your knee. And that will keep your back nice and long. So when you are done with the run, it's really important that you stretch your muscles. A power yoga series of some standing poses can ensure that you don't cool down too quickly and then you want to come down to the ground and do some stretches that will stretch your hamstrings as well as well as your quads. Namaste."