The Need To Warm Up Before Starting With Your Exercise Regime

by admin on September 6, 2010

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. A lot of people do not see the importance of warm up exercises and just directly go to their exercise regime without starting out with any warm-up programs.

Why do we need to do warm up exercises? Once physical activity is done by the body, the body starts to undergo several changes. A person's respiratory rate, blood flow, and oxygen and nutrient levels delivered to the cells increases. The rate of increase should be regulated in a steady pace to prepare the body for the physical stress that exercise will demand. If you do not heed this advice, the body just becomes ineffective in delivering the expected outcome of the whole workout process. Warming up preps up the nervous system, heightens mental awareness and alertness, and loosens up joints and muscles to make them less prone to injuries. Warm ups jump starts the fluid located in the joints, minimizing the risk for wear and tear of the muscles. The exercise preliminary gives the heart enough time to be able to start pumping the needed nutrients and blood into the muscles.

Warm up exercises are very ideal for older people who already have weaker hearts, lesser fluids in the joints and lesser supple tissues. 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? To put it simply, any actions that could make the heart start beating faster can already be considered as a warm-up exercise. One can simply walk and jog, or if a cardiovascular equipment is available, such as rowing machine or a bicycle, it can be utilised. Start at a gentle pace, and then slowly increase the pace until heart beat rate increases and the body temperature rises. Make sure that the pacing of your warm up exercise goes in accordance with your body’s capacity so that it becomes energized rather than becoming exhausted.

{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. The stretching exercise that you choose should be in accordance to the kind of exercise program you intend to do. For instance, if one is about to play sports, the recommended kind of stretching would be the ones that mimics the movements that will be done in the court or field. For people who are about to engage into martial arts, the most ideal form of warm-up exercises is light sparring or doing martial arts movement in slow motion. A minimum of eight seconds of stretching the major muscles group is necessary. To avoid getting the blood all stuck up, make sure that you move your legs every now and then while doing your strectches. Make sure that you have already done some warm up exercises before you start doing your stretching. Do not bounce while stretching. This would contract the muscles and make them more prone to muscle tear or pull.

For weight-lifters, this is what should be done after the initial warm up. Start lifting 50-60% of the weight you intend to lift and do the same number of repetition of your weight lifting plan. Eventually, increase the weight as you progress and decrease the number of repetition as you go along. Then, rest for a while, about thirty seconds, then do the whole process again. Once the warm up is done, only then can you start doing some heavy lifting The advantage of doing the procedure is that the heavy sets will feel less daunting and can now be performed with considerably less stress.

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. It is recommended that everybody do exercises, however, these should be done properly.

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