Best Tips On Warming Up Before Exercise

Image Source: Pixnio 

Regular Exercises is very important for your health. It is the key for a healthy life. Doing exercise regularly makes you fit and prevent disease like, high blood pressure, heart stroke, high cholesterol diabetes and some type of cancer. Daily exercise routine make you feel good and improves your body posture.

Regular exercising strengthen your whole body. Actually, any type of controlled physical activity brings benefit to your health. Yoga is another form of exercise which involves your body movement in a controlled manner. This makes you energetic and feel stress free. A healthy diet with daily exercises makes you healthy and enhance your well being.

Why Warm Up Is Required Before Exercise?

Your body muscles are in rest state before exercise. If you do not warm up before exercise, your muscles may get cramped and soreness. You muscle tissues may break and you feel pain. An injury can break your exercise routine. 

Warm up before exercise make your muscles move. It increases the heart rate & blood flow and activates the metabolism. More oxygen flows through muscles. Warming up before exercise provides stability your body needs. It reduces the likelihood of getting injured during exercise.

There are two types of warm up exercises, static and dynamic.

Static Warm Up

• Static warm up involves single point movement of the body and helps in initiating basic range of motion to the muscles. Static warm up should be done for 1-3 minutes. Stretching is most popular type of static warm up exercise. 

• For the neck, stretches such as lateral and forward stretching and side stretching is beneficial. 

• Upper body twist, hamstring stretch (stretching by keeping the legs straight), quad stretch (stretching the muscles of the thighs) and calf stretch (stretching the calf muscles by leaning against the wall) can be done. 

• Shoulder rotations can be done to activate the shoulders.

Dynamic Warm Up

• Dynamic warm up improves the range of motion and activates legs, hips and core muscles. It strengthens muscles for more intense exercises and improves body response.

• For upper back and shoulder strengthening, 10-12 bicep curls a day can be good.

• Push ups are best and effective warm up option for shoulder and upper back strengthening.

• Skipping is recommended for people below 40. It is recommended to do skipping for 2-5 minutes.

• Squats strengthen thigh muscles and lower back muscles. It is recommended to do 15-20 squats a day.

• Lunges help in strengthening leg muscles and help in weight loss. 12 reps of lungs are advisable to do before your intensive exercising. 

• Rotate your hips in clock and anti-clock wise direction. This will help activate your hip and back muscles.

• Leg swings can be done in lateral position by pulling in and pushing out and also can be done by moving the leg forward and backward.

• PT exercises improve the range of motion and activate muscles.

• Cardio exercises such as static jogging, running and normal to brisk walk can be done if you don't have knee problems.

Cool Down After Exercise

After vigorous exercise, cooling down of your body is important. Sudden stopping of physical movement after exercise can cause pooling of blood in the legs and can also nausea. 

Cooling down after exercise loosens up the joints and increases the blood flow, reduces muscle stiffness and soreness, helps activate the central nervous system and moderates blood circulation to maintain the performance level after exercise. It helps to bring back your heart rate normal.

• A light jog or a medium brisk walk for 5 minutes could help the body cool down. 

• After lifting, do some dynamic stretches such as walking lunges or yoga poses.

Exercise, warm up or intensive, required some precautions. Keep your body hydrated and drink water between exercise. Your muscles need fluid between them otherwise you may get your muscles injured.

Right Shoes and equipment is naturally necessary while doing exercise. Without those you can not get your full potential for lifting weights.

Do not exercise all 7 days in a week. Your body needs to recover after training sessions. Rest for 1 or 2 days after 5 days exercise schedule.

If you got injured, let heal your body properly. Start exercises when you are completely healed otherwise you will make your small injury a big one. Take care of yourself.