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Are You Doing Your Warm Up Exercises?Warm Up Exercises Many fitness fanatics dive right into their workout immediately upon entering the gym or arriving at the park. But there’s one question that I’m sure many of you have on your mind… What’s the scoop on warming up? Should you do it? Does it really help with your workout? What about cooling down? Well, my friend, you’ve come to the right place for answers! Warming Up and Stretching Let’s say you’re going golfing with some of your buddies from work. You arrive to the course at about 8 a.m., about an hour after getting out of bed. You simply woke up, took a shower, at breakfast and enjoyed a bottle of water on the way to the course. How likely is it that you’ll feel like teeing off immediately upon arriving to the course? Not very. You’re going to feel a little stiff since you’ve been laying in one position for 8 consecutive hours. So what do you do? You stretch out your arms, legs, wrists and ankles and proceed to hit a few balls at the driving range. After that, you meet back up with your friends to start the round of golf. That sounds about right, right? The main point I’m trying to illustrate is that everyone needs to do some warm up exercises before any sort of activity, whether it’s lifting weights, jogging, or even sitting down to type at work! That’s right, your wrists need a warm up too! But should you stretch your muscles before warming up on the driving range as you do when you arrive to the golf course? The answer to this questions is absolutely not! Does this mean stretching is bad? Not at all! It’s just important to stretch after you’ve hit a few balls on the driving range rather than before. You should never stretch out a muscle that isn’t already sufficiently warmed up. Why? Let’s think about what warm up exercises can do for your muscles. The whole point of doing them is to get some blood flowing into your muscles, thereby increasing their core temperature (hence the term “warming up”) and metabolic activity. It’s kind of like going out to start your car in advance on a cold morning to get the warm air flowing through the A/C vents. Heck, you don’t want to be sitting there in the cold, do you? Your muscles are the same way. You don’t want to jumpstart them suddenly with a violent golf swing after hours, if not days of inactivity. Without the preliminary warm up exercises to increase blood flow, you could potentially strain or tear a muscle, let alone damage any joints they may be protecting. A warm up routine should consist of the very same movements you’ll be performing. So, at the driving range, you want to take a few nice, easy practice swings, gradually increasing in force as you continue. This will force blood into the muscles you’ll be working throughout the golf round. Now, after you’ve warmed up enough to feel fairly comfortable with your golf swing, it’s time to stretch. What’s the point of stretching after you’ve already warmed up? Well, if you stretch before a sufficient amount of blood has arrived to the muscle, you’ll risk tearing or straining that muscle because it’s not “ready” to start moving! You wouldn’t sprint a 60-yard dash without first doing some warm up exercises and stretching, would you? Stretching before warming up can injure the muscles you’re trying to protect! Try explaining that one to the doctor. So I think you’ve got the idea: do your warm up exercises, do some light stretching, then begin your workout or activity! How Much Should You Stretch? Let’s face it, there’s absolutely no reason to spend 15 or 20 minutes just stretching your muscles. It’s boring, tiring, and can potentially hinder your performance. Yes, stretching will inhibit your performance if you do it too much. Your muscles simply become too elastic and you’ll feel like a wet noodle. This has happened to me on many occasions because the baseball coaches were (with good intentions) trying to keep us from being injured. In fact, they were actually increasing our chances of being injured! Take only a few minutes to stretch: that’s 3-5 minutes max. Studies have shown that stretching too much can cause slow reactions and weaken your muscles; and weakened muscles have the potential for injury and sub-par (pardon the pun) performance. How Should You Stretch? Two words. Static Stretching. This is simply the safest way to stretch by avoiding any sort of stretching injury. Each stretch is a slow, gentle progression through the entire range of motion. Don’t overdo it! Only stretch to the point of mild discomfort. No sharp pains or grimaces! If you do feel this sort of aching, stop immediately and do it more gently. You should only stretch to the point of resistance and/or tightness. Hold at this position for a 7-10 seconds, then relax. Do the same stretch once or twice, but never more than that! No overstretching! If you read my page on the benefits of stretching, you’ll remember that bounce-stretching is a fantastic way, if not the best way, to cause serious injury. It’s simply a sudden over-stretching reflex that tears and strains muscles because they’ve been stretched them beyond their limits. You’ll stay away from this, right? Warm Up Exercises for Weight Lifting Aerobics Strength training, just like any other activity, requires warm up exercises and stretching to get the most benefit from your workout. What single activity do you think can give you the most complete warm up? That’s right, aerobics! I don’t mean you need to jump rope and do back-flips for 20 minutes, but just a light jog, a few minutes on an exercise bike or something similar. Get the blood pumping to the muscles you’ll be working! Do this until you’ve started sweating, then you’ll know you’ve warmed up enough. It may also be beneficial to extend this time a bit to get a little cardio work in. No, I don’t mean run 10 miles then lift, I just mean maybe to a light jog for 10-15 minutes if you feel like it. But, at the very minimum, try to do your aerobic warm up exercises until you’ve broken a sweat. After you’ve done this warm up, remember to do some light stretching! This is important to make sure your muscles are ready for your weight lifting routine. After you’ve stretched and before you’ve started lifting, it’s also recommended to do some light lifting to target the very muscles you’re about to work. Light Lifting This is a great way to warm up before weight training! Do some of the first exercises you’ll be doing in your workout. For example, if you plan on doing squats first, warm up with squats! The only difference is that you’ll only be lifting half the weight of your normal sets. For example, if you normally squat 250 lbs, warm up with a set at 125 lbs. Do the same with your next exercise. It’s not necessary to go through your whole routine doing warm ups each time. Remember, the idea is to just get the blood flowing to the muscles you’ll be working! These sorts of warm up exercises are obviously very specific and targeted for what you’re about to do in your workout. If you plan on doing bench press, try doing about 20 pushups before laying under the bar. If you’re doing biceps curls, use a weight half of what you would normally. It’s easy and specific! Warm up exercises become extremely important as the intensity increases. The heavier the load, the more important your warm ups. After all, as you increase the weight, it’s easy to imagine that you’ll be more prone to injury. So have you got all that? Warm up exercises, stretch, a light lift, then the real lifting! This whole process shouldn’t take more than about 12 minutes, unless you decided to extend the cardio portion of the warm up. Cooling Down You’ve finished you’re workout and you’re ready to head out the door, on your way to getting a post-workout snack (which, by the way, should occur no more than 45 minutes after finishing your workout!). Hold it right there. What happened to your cool down routine? This can be critically important. Why? Well, your muscles are full of blood from lifting and jogging. You feel really satisfied and you look good in the mirror (you’ve got that “pumped” look!). You’ve filled your muscles with blood to make them look better and with increased definition. But… What’s actually happened is that your muscles have pulled blood away from your heart due to their need of oxygen. Your heart needs oxygen, too! This is how we survive. When you abruptly stop using the muscles that draw this large volume of blood and promptly sit down and become inactive, this blood becomes trapped in the muscle because there’s no way to get back into circulation. You need to do a little bit of moving around to force blood back into your veins and back to the heart. Not doing this can actually lead to ischemia (lack of oxygen to the heart) which can result in a heart attack. Similarly to the warm up exercises, your cool down routine should include light lifting and/or light cardio work to get the blood flowing back to the heart. These light exercises allow your muscles to relax a bit while still working, thereby reducing oxygen demand by the muscle and still squeezing blood back through the veins towards the heart. Just five minutes! Warm up exercises (along with cooling down) are a few of the most overlooked aspects of strength training out there. It’s actually pretty unfortunate because many injuries can be avoided just by spending 10 minutes before and 5 minutes after your workout to take care of your muscles. The fact is that your body has no on/off switch. You can’t just flip a switch and suddenly work at full throttle. Your car won’t even do that for you. Bottom line? Do your warm up exercises, Do your cool down exercises. You’ll be glad you did!
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