The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of warm-up and cool-down exercises on pain and muscle activation of delayed onset muscle soreness after intense exercise. Delayed onset muscle soreness was caused by the eccentric exercise in the elbow flexor muscle of the non-dominant upper limb. Forty-four subjects volunteered to participate in this study and were randomly assigned to one of the following groups: warm-up and cool-down group, only warm-up group, only cool-down group, or control group with no intervention. The level of perceived pain using the visual analogue scale and electromyographic activation change in maximal voluntary isometric contraction were measured 4 times at the following times: 10 min, 24 hr, 48 hr, and 72 hr after the exercise. The results revealed the main effect between the groups and interaction effect between the group and measurement session (p<.05). The warm-up and cool-down group showed most favorable results with respect to reduced perceived pain level and increased muscle strength in most measurement sessions, and the only warm-up group showed significantly more decreased pain level than the control group at 24 hr and 48 hr and more increased muscle activation than the cool-down group at 48 hr (p<.05). However, there were no significant differences in pain level and muscle activation between the only cool-down group and control group at all measurement sessions (p>.05). The findings suggest that the warm-up exercise performed before an intense exercise had beneficial effects on the symptoms of delayed onset muscle soreness, whereas cool-down exercise performed after the intense exercise did not.

Our purpose of this study was to determine the most effective cool-down exercise. The recovery times of dynamic strength after isometric and isotonic cool-down exercise were measured immediately post cool-down exercise, 30 seconds later and 60 seconds later in 30 normal, healthy men from 19 to 29 years, using dumbells(Model, Iron). The recovery time of dynamic strength had a significant positive correlation with isotonic and isometric cool-down exercise using the Chi-square method (p<0.01). Sources of significant differences were determined by the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test (p<0.01). The isometric cool-down exercise significantly shortened the recovery time of dynamic strength. We suggest that the isometric cool-down exercise may be more effective than isotonic cool-down exercise in shortening the recovery time of dynamic strength.