Why Warm Ups Are Important
Completing a few warm up exercises is important for a number of reasons, from warming up your muscles to gradually increasing your heart rate. In fact, it can do a whole lot more for your body as well as your mind.
Whether you are going for a light jog around the block for the first time since high school, or you’re training for a marathon you’ve been planning to run for some time, a good warm up routine is imperative to ensure that you do your ultimate best, and avoid any injuries while doing so.
Always Be Prepared
Some solid advice in exercise and life in general, making sure you are always prepared is very important. It can be equated to driving your car in the dead of winter, where you have to warm up or you won’t get very far when you try to rev it up some considerably high speeds, and the same goes for exercising.
If you want to avoid pulling any muscles, you need to warm them up first. You have to prepare yourself physically if you want to ensure the best performance. This means gradually increasing your body temperature with a simple but effective warm up exercise.
Increase Your Blood Circulation
You’d be surprised at how important blood circulation is when engaging in a bit of exercise, regardless of how strenuous it may be. Just 5 or 10 minutes can help gradually increase the blood circulation in your muscles, ligaments and tendons.
Consider it like oiling a wheel that keeps squeaking, where you provide the many aspects of your physiology with a chance to start working together. With muscles warming up and helping you prevent injury and your ligaments and tendons increasingly becoming flexible, not warming up before working out would be a silly move.
Mental Warm Ups
Your mind is one of the most important aspects to any part of life, including something that appears as thoughtless as working out. This is especially true when getting involved in strenuous exercise that goes on for some time, such as a long hike or a marathon.
During these times your body will take on a lot of stress and adequate warm up activities actually help you deal with that stress a lot better. So, whether you’re referring to a 10km run, or in my case an afternoon spent playing online slots NZ from the comfort of my couch, being mentally prepared is imperative.
Warm Ups Vs. Stretching
Warm up exercising and stretching have often been grouped together, however, they are actually 2 very different principles in terms of proper exercising. While they are both very important in ensuring an optimal workout, warm up exercises increase your body temperature gradually and stretches are solely beneficial for your muscles.
Make sure you know the difference between the two, because stretching is not going to be enough for endurance sports and you very well may still end up with tears. The safest bet? Do both.
