What is warm up? It is one of the questions that most trainer don’t explain very well. It is tedious work, however, very important process to prepare the body for the exercises or physical activities that you are about to be doing. During the physical activities, there always will be a risk of injury. However, by properly executing the warmup chance of injury will be lowered and may enhance your performance during your physical activities. In a way proper warm up can improve the outcome of your physical activity.
Prior to the physical activities or training, your body typically is not in a ready state. By properly warming up, you are transitioning the blood supplies to muscles, increasing your core temperature, loosening up the joints, enhancing the muscle elasticity and so on. Walking on the treadmill or riding on a bike for 10-15 minutes followed by foam rolling, like most trainers advise, is not affective as a warm up.
Warm up can vary depending on what you are accomplishing during the activity, however, ideally consists of two phases.
First phase is joint and muscle preparation. In this phase, you are to mobilize the joints and muscles to prepare them for the movement. You don’t need too much time on each exercise, however, skipping this phase can lead to unnecessary injuries. Joints you should be preparing should be, ankle, knees, hip, spine, shoulder blades, shoulder, elbow, wrist, and neck. By focusing on these joints, muscular activities will also be present which allows the muscle to increase blood flow and improve its elasticity. During your physical activities the body can go through various movement patterns and need to be prepared not just to avoid injuries but also to perform well.
Second phase is skill preparation. This is specific movement practice to the physical activity you are about to perform. If the back squat is your main exercise, then you will be working on squat and progressively increasing the weight. If you are working on your pull ups, then you will be working on pulls. If you are running, then the running with slower pace and progressively increasing the pace will be the skill preparation. This is also a phase to see if your body needs more joint and muscle preparation for your activity. If necessary, go back to the first phase to do further preparation work.
By performing these two phases, which may take about 5-10 minutes, will give you better benefit than just walking on the treadmill or laying on the foam roller. Nothing wrong with them but that is not enough to improve your performance and prevent injuries.
If you are not sure what to do, you can follow the video for your next physical activities. It is under 4 minutes to prepare majority of the joints and muscles. If you are planning on using this prior to your workout, make sure to have skill work after the video. Proper warm up may set a strong foundation for your physical performance and it is best to not cut this phase short.
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