The Need To Warm Up Before Starting With Your Exercise Regime

With more and more people becoming more interested with exercising, making warm up exercises as a preliminary to any exercising regime should become a must. Many have repeatedly ignored going through the warm up stage before working out, not knowing the consequences in doing so.

What is the Importance of doing warm-up exercises? Once physical activity is done by the body, the body starts to undergo several changes. There are increases in the body’s blood flow, levels of nutrients and oxygen delivered to the cells, and respiratory rate. The body should be able to prepare for this increase and the expected physical stress it would have to undergo. Disregarding this basic idea would only make the body less effective in functioning well and the whole workout process less fruitful. There are a lot of things that warm-up exercises could do and among them are increasing the alertness and awareness of a person, help lessen the risk of injuring muscles and joints by making them loose and prepare the nervous system for more rigorous activities. The joints tend to become lubricated during warm-up exercises thus they become less likely to be torn or worn. The time is just enough to give the heart an opportunity to adjust to be able to start pumping the nedded blood and nutrients to the muscles.

This is especially important for old people whose tissues are less supple, joints have less fluids and hearts are less stronger. In fact, there have been a lot of cases when sudden exercises induced heart attack for older people.

How does a person warm up properly? The most basic definition of what a warm-up exercises is  any activity that could start make the heart beat faster. One can simply walk and jog, or if a cardiovascular equipment is available, such as rowing machine or a bicycle, it can be utilised. Do not go fast immediately, start slowly until your body and your heart beat rate gets momentum. Bear in mind that your main goal is to make the body energized and not exhausted, so make sure that your pacing is in accordance to what your body can manage.

{After working up a light sweat {suggested time is 3-5 minutes, longer if the person is working out in a cold environment} one should do dynamic stretching.~After breaking into a sweat which would usually take around three to five minutes long if done in regular room temperature and longer in cold areas, the next thing to do is to do dynamic stretching.~After three to five minutes, you start breaking into light sweat {it usually takes a lot longer when the warm up exercise is done in a room with cold temperature}, you can immediately start doing dynamic stretching exercises.} Strecthing is ideal as it helps make the hip, shoulder and spine area flexible. Make sure that the stretching exercise you choose is in accordance to the kind of exercise program you have. For example, if a person intends to play a certain kind of sport, then he would need to do warm up exercises that  are similar to the actions that he is expected to do while playing. If one is about to do martial arts, light sparring can be done in the quarter of the normal speed, or just simply do the movements in slow motion. The major muscles groups should be stretched for a minimum of eight seconds. To avoid getting the blood all stuck up, make sure that you move your legs every now and then while doing your strectches. Remember, one should only do stretching if the muscles are already warmed up. Make sure that keep from bouncing when you are doing your stretching exercise. Muscles might get contracted and eventually become torn or pulled.

For weight-lifters, this is what should be done after the initial warm up. Load the bar with about 50-60% of the heaviest weight to be done for the session and perform the number of repetitions that will be done for the heavy sets. Then, the weight would eventually be increased by 20-30% and decrease the number of repetition two to three times. Then, rest for a while, about thirty seconds, then do the whole process again. After this warm up, one can now proceed to the heavy lifting for the day. Given this kind of warm up exercise, the actual exercise can become less daunting and less stressful.

Also, after the whole exercise program, it is also equally important to cool down. Once a person stops suddenly after a very demanding activity, the blood gathers up in the muscles and this would block the oxygen from flowing freely. This would make way for a increased risk of experiencing heart attack. The two, cooling down and warming up, are both important.

Regular exercises can do a lot to improve one’s health. Everyone is encouraged to pump it up, just remember to remember all the necessary precautions not only to maximize the workout, but also to stay safe and healthy.

Being a personal trainer is all about making a positive difference: a difference in your own life and in the lives of others. That is why we make sure that we equip those people who dream of helping by guiding them with their fitness training with enough knowledge to become experts in their fields with personal training courses Melbourne style. With our personal training courses, fitness courses, personal trainer certification, and fitness courses trainer certification, we can surely give them what they need.  

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