Warm-up before training

Author: Timko Ilya - master of the whole project and fitness trainer.
2016-12-22

Main Principles of Warming Up

1. Everyone should warm up always. Without exception.

2. A normal warm-up cannot take less than 5 minutes. Ideally, it should be 10 minutes. In a shorter time, you simply won't have enough time to prepare your body for a workout.

3. For a good warm-up, it is not necessary to have special sports equipment. You can have nothing at all.

3 Parts of Warm-Up

The warm-up should consist of 3 parts:

1. General body warm-up. This takes one and a half to two minutes and consists of light cardio. This could be a 500-meter jog, skipping rope, going up and down stairs, using a cardio machine, etc. The goal of this part of the warm-up is to increase breathing rate, heart rate, and accelerate blood flow through the vessels.

2. Joint warm-up. Takes 2–3 minutes. This consists of rotational movements of all joints. On average, do 15 repetitions in each direction. The order of the joints does not matter at all. All these discussions about warming up from top to bottom or bottom to top are untrue.

3. Stretching of joints and muscles. This takes 3–5 minutes. Here, the order is also not important. Stretch until you feel a slight pain. If you are young and flexible, one round is enough. If you are older and stiff, you can do 2 or even 3 rounds for all joints. In that case, your warm-up may take more than 10 minutes. Generally, the duration of warming up usually increases with age.

Why this particular sequence? The fact is that it is obvious that in order to stretch the joints, you need to warm up the whole body and those very joints first. Stretching "cold" is at least less effective and, at most, injury-prone. It wouldn’t hurt to warm up the whole body before joint warm-up. That’s why such a sequence is established.

What Does Warming Up Provide?

1. Reduced risk of injury. The more elastic the tendons and muscles, the harder they are to tear. It is like a dry and flexible branch. A flexible branch is hard to break. A dry and inflexible one is very easy to break.

2. Improved technique of performing exercises. Some exercises require a greater range of motion and increased elasticity of the muscles and tendons.

3. Increased strength. Physiologists have proven that under equal conditions, the more elastic the muscle, the stronger it is. This is related to the increased difference between its contraction and extension.

4. Increased endurance during cardio. A prepared and warmed-up body has already increased heart rate and breathing. This means it is already ready for cardiovascular load and does not need to adapt from scratch when you start cardio.