Warmup Exercises

Although you may be tempted to jump right into your workout, your training session will be much more effective if you take a few minutes to warm up properly. A warm-up should be dynamic so that it wakes up your neural and muscular systems so that they’re ready to perform. A 10 to 15 minute dynamic warm-up features two separate components, which include general and specific exercises.

  1. Significance

    • A dynamic warm-up increases your heart and breathing rate, which in turn jump starts blood flow so that you’re able to better deliver oxygen and nutrients to your working muscles. Your body temperature increases and your neural system becomes more alert, which means your muscles are able to contract more explosively. Because your body is better prepared to handle the stress of your workout, you decrease your risk of injury.

    General Warm-up

    • A dynamic warm-up begins with general exercises that are meant to get your heart pumping and your lungs working. This component lasts 5 to 10 minutes. Begin with exercises of lower intensity and progress onto higher intensity activities. A good exercise to start with is a couple sets of slow paced jogs. Move onto bouts of high knees and butt-kicks, which will warm up your hips. Do body weight squats in place to hit your legs and hips. Leg swings involve holding onto a stable object and first doing a set of swinging your one leg forward and backwards, then a set of swinging the leg across your body and out to the side.

    Specific Warm-up

    • After your body is warm, move onto a 5 to 10 minute bout of specific warm-up exercises. These exercises will mimic what you’ll be doing during your workout or practice. For example, if you’re warming up for basketball practice, you’ll want to do a set of explosive skips, jump squats and z-cuts, which mimic the jumping and cutting that you’ll be required to do in your workout. If you’re preparing for a run, skips would also be beneficial, as well as walking lunges. At the end of your dynamic warm-up, you should have broken a sweat.

    Static Stretching

    • Avoid doing static stretching exercises when you’re warming up. Static stretching involves getting into a position where you elongate a muscle and hold the stretch for 15 to 30 seconds. The activity is effective at improving your flexibility. However, when you do static stretches, you’re essentially putting your neuromuscular system to sleep by decreasing the speed of muscular contractions, meaning you’ll be adversely affecting your performance. Do static stretching immediately after your workout when your muscles are warm.