Most athletes warm up before working out or competing to improve performance and to help prevent injury.
But to come up with a complete answer, you must be specific. What kind of warm-up are you doing? For what kind of activity are you warming up and what is your current conditioning level.
In this 2 part series you will discover the theoretical purpose of warm-up exercises, the psychological factors created by warming up and 4 styles of warm-up that will help improve your game!.
Physical Purpose Of Warming Up
Increased Muscle Temperature
Improved Metabolic Adjustment
Increased Velocity Of Nerve Conduction
Increased Capillaries Opened In Muscle
Psychological Factors Of Warming Up
Skilled performance improves with activity identical or directly related to actual workouts and corresponding sports activities.
Prior physical activity improves the “mental set” or attitude of the athlete, especially when the activity is related to the workout or corresponding sporting activity.
Increased arousal or enthusiasm, eagerness and mental readiness.
One potential drawback of warming up is: Fatigue
Don’t mistake a good warm-up session for your workout.
Field Warm Up
This is the first of 4 warm-up styles you will learn over the next 2 blog posts.
Field warm-up is an athletic series of exercises done on an open field used for outdoor or indoor. Performed at a light pace with some stretching similar to bootcamp style exercise not using any equipment, jogging and light calisthenics are examples.
Stretching is one of the most overlooked aspects of a workout program / active lifestyle. The reality is that our bodies are designed to move on a near constant basis. But modern lifestyles have drastically changed human behavior and routines to a more sedentary lifestyle.
Hard physical labor has been replaced with more sedentary “mental” work styles which involve sitting at desk or standing in one place for extended periods of time.
A way to combat this sedentary lifestyle is to get up and MOVE. Take a walk, do some pushups and yes even stretch. And always, always- it is important to stretch your body before, during and after every workout. Stretching will keep your body warm and lubricated and it will help reduce injuries.
There are several ways to stretch. The two we will discuss are static stretching and ballistic stretching.
Static stretching is the typical method of stretching. Usually it is longer in duration lasting 30 to 60 seconds during each stretch. Ballistic stretching is the style Olympic swimmers use to warm up. They swing their arms back and forth very rapidly but smoothly to avoid injury. Both techniques work. But I recommend sticking mostly to the static technique and then add ballistic occasionally.
Stretching:
Reduces muscle tension
Improves performance
Increases range of motion
Increases flexibility
Stretching Tips
Spend 10 – 30 seconds in each stretch. Don’t bounce.
Good idea to stretch / warm-up at the same time.
Perform before/during/after a work out and throughout the day.
Along with stretching I recommend monthly or bi-monthly massage therapy. Deep massage helps the body eliminate lactic acid build up from weight training or other intense muscle activity.
It is good to schedule chiropractic alignments.
Checkout your Virtual Trainer for many stretching routines!
It isn’t everyday that you come across something that can change the way you approach your life, especially when it comes to the deep seated habits we typically have when it comes to our health and fitness activity. However there is something I came across recently that amazed me with the simplicity in which it delivers such a broad range of benefits. This something, was called SoloStrength.
By now, most of us have heard about the shift in interest from weight or plate loaded resistance training, to more traditional and natural forms of movement and body weight based exercise. There are the standard tests of strength and base exercises in push ups, pull ups and rowing type movements, but there has also been a great deal of innovation and advancement in the tools we can use to expand the exercises. SoloStrength, offers all the standard body weight exercises on this simple to use system, but by sheer simplicity, makes it very easy to adapt the support it offers, to all levels of users and greatly increase the range of variety of exercises that can be done. They have a lot of demonstration videos on their website store, to help you understand how you can use their system for not only the strength training exercises, but cardio functional training and circuits and a range of stretching programs to keep your body flexible and release stress.
The SoloStrength is quite amazing not just for the simplicity and speed which you can navigate through your exercises, but the design lends itself for use as an anchor support for other popular body weight based exercise systems including Suspension training (such as TRX) and also adjustable points for different exercises with variable resistance bands and other accessories. This is one very fun and versatile system to play with. Not only is it efficient for exercising with, it’s a beautiful design piece which looks good in any environment, and if you have kids, they will entertain themselves for hours a day on it playing as a gym bar set. Now that’s a killer idea for home exercise all wrapped up in one tidy little system. Let me know what you think!
I’d suggest this for anyone looking to start or expand their home gym setup, or personal trainers looking to make excellent use of their training spaces and limiting their equipment requirements (these units are commercial quality).
It’s great to see the expanding options we have for safe and simple training methods that keep us all much more open to consistent and convenient training in our homes, and further supporting our family members on their journey’s of fitness and health. I’m looking forward to working with my system and will share more with you in coming months. You can check out more info on this system here.
