The Importance Of Warming Up Muscles

When you are athletic, regardless of your level, it is important to warm up well. As its name suggests, warming up increases your body temperature to prepare your body for exercise; a preparation that both improves athletic performance and reduces the risk of injury. So what is the importance of warming up muscles before a workout ?

Whatever activity you do, any good warm-up takes into account two main areas of work: muscle and cardio warm-up, and joint warm-up.

Muscle warm-up

It is essential to warm up your muscles before each sports session. It helps to avoid a number of muscle pains and injuries (elongation, breakdown, etc.).

Concretely, this phase of your warm-up should include:

• Jogging to work on endurance
• Dynamic stretches
• Muscle preparation movements

Dynamic stretching concerns the main muscle groups solicited during your practice: hamstrings and quadriceps, calf muscles, back, arms, even the neck.

As for the preparation movements, these are dynamic exercises such as heels-buttocks, knee raises, or arm twists.

For a good warm-up, it is recommended to combine each type of stretching with the corresponding muscle preparation exercise: for example, knee raises after stretching the glutes and hamstrings; or the arm reels after stretching the arms and shoulders.

The importance of warming up muscles before sport

–The warm-up allows the muscles to begin their effort gently.

It causes the capillaries to dilate and increases the temperature of the body. This allows a better efficiency of the chemical reactions that generate energy. In addition, it promotes muscle use of the aerobic pathway which is more energy efficient. Stretches stimulate and stretch muscles and tendons, which reduces the risk of accidents such as stretching or tearing.

– Warming up is essential to prepare the body and mind for exercise, and to help prevent accidents.

It gives the organs time to prepare for the performance it will have to perform. It also makes it possible to adapt to conditions imposed by the environment: temperature, humidity, altitude, etc. Athletes who have a large muscle mass take longer to warm up.

– The warm-up must be systematically carried out before each session.

For this, it is important to make it a real ritual. The same exercises should be repeated in the same order, training after training. At first, the 15 to 20 minutes spent warming up may seem like a long time. Start as a group to motivate each other. After a few sessions, it will no longer occur to you to do without it.

A well-conducted warm-up has three phases:

• General warm-up (10 to 15 minutes): this involves doing exercises that raise the body’s temperature and put it in condition. Jogging, jumping rope, riding a bike, doing push-ups, sit-ups, squats, etc., all kinds of activities done gradually and gently can do the trick. It is necessary to work the muscles that will be solicited by the sport by favoring rapid movements and without resistance;
• Flexibility (5 minutes): the goal of this phase is to soften the muscles and tendons that will be working, and to stimulate their receptors. Each muscle or group of muscles is stretched for 6 seconds (i.e. two full breaths), then contracted for 6 seconds (while holding the stretch position, which requires a bit of concentration at first), and finally released for 6 seconds . The exercise is repeated once;
• The specific warm-up: in fact, it is a question of starting the session itself, but without forcing, by gradually increasing the intensity of the effort.

Remember

Twenty minutes of warming up before each session is better than two months off after an accident! It can be beneficial to practice warm-ups every day, even on outside sports days, for example in the morning when you get up to stretch your muscles.

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I hope you enjoyed this blog post about the importance of warming up and found it useful. Comment down below what you think, and do you make sure to warm up before every session, what are your thoughts.

Looking forward to reading your comments, sending you love and positive energy!!!