Hot Stuff: Warming Up
When you have to fit an exercise routine into your already busy schedule, you might be tempted to simply skip the warm up, even though you’ve heard horror stories about people getting injured while working out. I got three words for ya: don’t do that! When you skip your warm up, you’re not only putting your body at risk for injury, but you’re also making the workout more difficult and less effective. For the best results, it’s important to warm up before every workout.
Warming up doesn’t have to take a long time either. In fact, a decent workout only has to be about 5 minutes long to be effective. And it doesn’t have to be boring—you can mix up a number of great moves to make your warm up as fun as the rest of your work out. Remember that a good warm up gets all of your muscles moving, even if you don’t think that you’ll be intensely working out a set of muscles on any particular day. Warming up is also important regardless of if you’re doing cardiovascular exercises or lifting weights.
The moves you do for a warm up shouldn’t make you feel tired or drained. The main goal of the warm up isn’t to become the focus of your workout, but to simply prepare your body for the workout to come. Good moves, therefore, include things like jogging in place,carioca, jumping jacks, lunges, push ups and jumping rope.
A good warm-up should also including dynamically stretching your muscles in a variety of ways, saving the static stretches for your cool-down. Also consider exercises that work on balance and form in order to prepare you for the exercises you will be doing in the workout.
If you’re really short on time, why not try warming up before you even get to the gym. Slowly jog or power walk to the gym, park as far away as possible and lunge to the door, or take the stairs instead of the elevator. That way, when you get to the gym to workout, your warm up is already half way done.
Here’s a quick video to show you how simple it can be.
You’ll be surprised at how much better your workouts will be when you invest just a couple of minutes before to warm up. Better workouts and less chance of injury – Guaranteed!
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