“Good workout, now go jog a couple of laps and take it in.” How often have you done that? Be honest it is a typical scenario. The athlete does the workout and as an afterthought we add that training dark hole we call a cooldown. I maintain that the cooldown, what you do after the body of the workout is completed is equally as important as the warm-up and only slightly less important that the workout itself.
I subscribe to the Winckler rule, named after my colleague Gary Winckler. The Winckler rule is quite simple: the last things you do in a training session should leave the athlete feeling the same way you want the athlete to feel when they start the next training session. So immediately that eliminates jogging or in an aquatic environment swimming an easy but sloppy cooldown swim. Use your creativity and imagination to design activities that will get the athlete connected and help them wind down from the workout and set-up the next workout. It is an excellent time to incorporate remedial modules to address individual needs. This is the appropriate time to work on dynamic balance and proprioception to get everything connected and to raise body awareness. During the cooldown is the best time to address flexibility using static stretching which has a calming effect on the body. Just like the warm-up and the workout make the cooldown active, dynamic and mindful and above all make it personal so that each athlete has ownership.