How Important is it to Warm Up?
There are a lot of known quantities when it comes to health and fitness. For example, we know with full certainty that if you want to get healthier, you’ll have to eat. That’s pretty basic stuff that doesn’t require you to be an Austin personal trainer for over 20 years to understand. Some things, however basic, are often overlooked, or have had their significance downplayed. A thorough and proper warm up before exercising is definitely one such thing.
A warm up can mean a lot of different things, to a lot of different people. It simply depends upon the activity as well as the goals of the individual trainee. As an example, if today is the day you were going to lift legs, it would behoove you stretch out your hamstrings, hip flexors, quadriceps, and so on. Doing so will afford you a better range of motion when you do the exercises, as well as help prevent injury to tight muscles contracting under a load. Another way to warm up that is completely valid, is to do some slow cardiovascular exercise, such as walk on a treadmill for a few minutes before engaging in exercise. This will get the heart rate up a little, and get your body invigorated to workout. Psychologically, it also serves as a wake up call to us that we need to start getting ready to wrap our heads around the workout that is about to take place. Both ways of warming up before exercising are great ways to help reduce the chances of injury once you begin your workout in earnest.
One thing to be careful of, however, when warming up, is to not overdo it, no matter how you warm up. You want to begin slowly and deliberately in order to allow the muscles and connective tissue adequate time to loosen up. If warming up aerobically, you also want to be sure that your workouts aren’t eclipsed by your warm up. In other words, don’t go crazy and burn a lot of energy warming up and leaving little energy for the workout. As far as stretching to warm up is concerned, it is vital to not over stretch or bounce on the stretch. Slowly get into the stretch and hold it until you feel looser in the affected area. Don’t look at the clock or count to 10 and be done. Use feel and don’t be afraid to take your time. If you bounce in and out of a stretch, you run a great risk of injuring the muscle. There is never a need for momentum in stretching or warming up in general. How deeply you go into a stretch should always be monitored as well. Overstretching can lead to injuries such as strains or even greater tears.
When the weather is cold and/or you’ll be exercising in a cold environment, it is all that much more imperative to warm up properly before exercising. Muscles that are tight to begin with, tend to be that much more tighter when they are cold. Take a little extra time and warm up sufficiently and avoid the risk of a silly and unnecessary injury.
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Andy
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