Introduction

We are sure you all have heard about the importance of exercising, working out and at least having minimum physical activity involved in your day for your body and mind to be physically and mentally fit.

Yes, we too advise you the same. To have yourself engaged in some kind of exercising if not a complete workout. But while doing so, many people overlook one thing that is equally important before you even start your workout session.

Yes, you guessed it right. It is a warm-up. Warm-ups are the set of basic exercises that are done before starting workouts or any sport. They set a safe stage for an effective and guarded workout session.

Here in this article, we'll explore what are warm-ups, why is it essential and beneficial science to incorporate them into your fitness regimen, along with few do's and don't of warming up.

Why Warming up is important?

Warm-up is the set of exercises that are done before the workout begins. It can be considered as a preparatory exercise that prepares your body for exercising and sports.

Warm-ups are important because they increase your heart rate, blood circulation, and overall temperature of the body. All of which is necessary for you to get in form, phase, and capacity to get involved in a workout.

Whether it's lifting weights, cardio, resistance training, or any type of exercise, warming up helps transition your body from the phase of rest to physical activity. Your joints, muscles, heart, body, and complete cardiovascular system get prepared for more strenuous, hard, and effective exercising.

Warming up also reduces the risk of heart attack and blood choking while and after you are done working out. It allows the heart to be at its pace and pump blood continuously to all body parts and muscles to let them work in proper tone and form.

Warm-ups make muscles and joints less prone to wear and tear and reduce the chance of damage and hurt, as working out is not always simple always, it puts a lot of pressure on the body and its parts.

Benefits of Warming up

Physiological Readiness

Warm-ups have various Physiological changes on your body. While engaging in warm-up before a workout, the body tends to undergo several beneficial and effective changes as increasing blood flow to muscles which directly means the enhanced flow of oxygen which helps produce more energy. As a result, the muscles become more active and responsive.

Additionally, warming up also has effects on your body temperature. It increases your body temperature and you can easily feel the heat. It enhances the functioning of nerves, along with increasing muscle metabolism.

Warming up before a workout ensures that your body is physiologically ready and balanced to perform at its optimum capacity during workouts.

Mental Preparation

Apart from physiological readiness, warming up before a workout also prepares your mind for the challenges and efforts ahead.

It gives a sense of readiness to your mind and allows you to focus on exercising. Mental readiness for working out is no less important than being physically ready.

As your body bears the physical pains and toils, your mind also needs to have the motivation, dedication, strength, and concentration to be involved in hard movements ahead.

The mental preparation that warm-up allows you to gain can enhance your overall state of mind and performance during the workout.

Injury Prevention

One of the primary functions and benefits of Warming up before workouts is that it helps in avoiding injuries and injury prevention.

As we mentioned, warming up increases your heart rate and enhances muscle movement and strength. It also reduces the risk and chance of damage that workout and exercising could cause to your body.

The risk of strains, sprains, body pains, and other injuries that can occur when muscles and joints are cold and bare is significantly reduced by warm-ups.

Enhanced Performance

Warm-ups gear your body up for an enhanced performance as they better your cardiovascular system, joints, and muscle condition. It makes them prepared to indulge in heavy and intense workouts.

Warm-ups help to target your speed, strength, and endurance making them better and allowing you to reach a higher level in your fitness routine.

Warming up before a workout also improves your joints' ability. It increases the range of movements and strength, making them ready for workouts.

Warming up reduces resistance in the body which could become a hurdle while engaging in workouts. It allows greater flexibility in joints, allowing ease of movement by decreased resistance. This is specifically beneficial for many physical activities such as martial art, kickboxing, weightlifting, cardio, etc.

A proper warm-up before exercising can lead to better overall performance of the body making it capable of all the challenges of a workout.

Warm-up exercises

• Cardiovascular Warm-Up

Your warm-up should start with some light cardiovascular exercises like jogging, cycling, or brisk walking. These workouts prepare your cardiovascular system progressively for more strenuous activity by increasing your heart rate and blood flow. At this point in your warm-up, strive to maintain a moderate degree of effort.

• Dynamic Stretching:

During your warm-up, use dynamic stretching activities. As you perform dynamic stretching, your muscles and joints stay in a constant range of motion under controlled and targeted circumstances. Arm circles, Leg swings, Neck rotations, and Knee bends and twists are a few examples. Dynamic stretching is a crucial part of any warm-up since it enhances muscle response, suppleness, and coordination.

Get started with Warm-ups

• Duration and timing

Warming up before working out is an important that should be done with a proper time allocation.

It is not something that you should do for the sake of doing or that you hear and see people doing it. Instead indulge yourself in proper warm-ups, starting from specific areas to the next.

• Intensity

Your warm-up session could be up to 10-20 minutes depending your body needs.

As your body warms up, start with low-intensity physical activities and progressively alter the exercises and increase the intensity.

The idea is to increase your body temperature gradually, blood flow, and heart rate without making yourself feel tired.

• Covering proper muscles

The thing to keep in mind while doing warm-up exercises is that you should aim for specific areas and muscles, like arms, legs, neck, etc.

This would help each part of your body to feel fresh and active for the workout session ahead.

Remember to always aim for a complete warm-up, i.e., head to toe, as this would help your complete body to be ready, heated, and geared up.

Incomplete or partial warm-up may lead to harm as you indulge in exercises ahead.

• Include stretching

An important part of warming up before a workout is stretching. Stretching helps reduce the resistance in the body, making muscles and joints proactive. It's always beneficial to include stretching exercises in warm-ups.

Stretching not only acts as a lubricant for workouts that impacts muscles but also reduces the risk of wear and tear, pain, and even severe damage.

• Mental preparation

Using the warm-up exercises to effectively empower your mental ability will help you perform well in your workout session.

Prioritize your workout objectives and mentally practice the exercises or skills you'll be performing during a workout. You can do better overall and with greater focus and attention while you work out if you mentally prepare yourself.

• Listening to your body

During warm-ups, pay attention to how your body feels. It should feel refreshed and eager to work out, not tense or worn out.

You should always try to alter the intensity or length of your warm-up if you feel any pain or discomfort in performing a certain set of warm-up exercises.

Remember to be gentle and stop if you feel you're going to harm yourself. Recall that warming up should do more for your body than deplete it before even starting your workout.

• After-workout

As you have now known the importance of warming up before workout, you now know how to get started. But, it is equally important for you to know how to end the workout.

It is always beneficial to end the workout with some stretching and cool-down exercises, such as, static jogging, etc. It reduces the chances of injuries and makes the body calm and settled after heavy workout sessions.

Conclusion

To sum up, warming up before an exercise session is not only a matter of talk and hearing, it is an essential step towards optimizing and enhancing your performance, along with reducing the chances of injury.

Warming up before a workout can improve your overall physical and mental performance, making your body and mind ready for the physical demands and efforts of exercising.

Being dedicated and consistent with your warm-up routine can turn your workout into a safer and more pleasurable workout session by setting aside time to warm up correctly.

If you want to explore on more warm-up exercises, along with functionalities of monitoring and improving your overall daily fitness experience, you can download and Sign up to the FitnEarn app - a place where your fitness efforts are rewarded.

Whether you're doing sports, cardio, or strength training, a well thought out warm-up program lays the groundwork for reaching your fitness objective