Cool Down or Warm Down?

Grace and I have never heard of the term 'warm down' before but both our husbands used the term 'warm down' to refer to the milder after-exercise activities sportsmen use to help the body transit from the high exertions during the game to its normal state.

From Grace's and my perspective, the term 'warm down' doesn't make sense. It's like saying that water runs uphill. Furthermore, in all our years as students and teachers, we've never ever heard the term 'warm down' being used after games and Physical Exercises. The term all our teachers used was 'cool down.'

I've also attended classes at Celebrity Fitness and all my instructors have consistently used the term 'cool down' and that included the personal trainers. They are qualified trainers so they shouldn't be making a simple mistake like that.

But the coach at the badminton court used the term 'warm down.' He is a state coach so he cannot be wrong either. So how?

Last night hubby looked up 'warm down' in the dictionaries and found the following:

Collins Dictionary
A warm-down is a series of special exercises that you do after a physical activity to help relax your muscles and joints.

MacMillan Dictionary
warm-down: gentle exercises that you do after playing a sport to help your body return to its usual temperature.

New Longman
warm-down: exercises that you do to relax your body after playing a sport or dancing

I have no choice but to concede defeat. If not, I would have added stubbornness to my sins. Anyway, I was too tired to bother with further research.

But this morning I woke up refreshed after a good night's rest. First thing I did was Google 'warm down + cool down + exercises.'

Where 'warm' is used, it is always used with reference to 'warm up.' Out of the top 50 search results, only one used the term 'warm down.' The rest used 'cool down' with reference to after exercise activities.

Hubby then typed in 'warm down exercises' and out of 50 results, 'warm down' is found in 10. The other 40 used the term 'cool down.'

I finally resorted to Wikipedia. I typed in 'Warm down' and the search result was 'Cooling Down'! It was only under 'Other Terms' that it was stated: "the term warming down is sometimes used to refer to the same process."

So it is not wrong to use 'warm down' but 'cool down' is the more commonly used and accepted term. It's a matter of preference but it's obvious more people prefer 'cool down' to 'warm down.'

I still think 'warm down' sounds odd so I'll still stick to 'cool down.'