If you don’t have much time, you may feel to skip a warm-up and jump right into your exercise. But doing so can raise your risk of injury, and put added strain on your muscles.
When planning for any exercise, whether it’s a cardio workout, strength training, or a team sport, it’s essential to take a 10 to 15 minutes to relax your muscles into exercise mode.
Doing warm-up exercises can help you get many fitness rewards.
Here’s a look at the advantages of warming up and different kind of warm-up exercises that you can try before hitting your training into high gear.
What are the advantages of warming up before a workout?
Warm-up exercises make your body fit for more vigorous activity and make it easier to work out. Some of the most significant advantages of a warm-up involve:
- Improved flexibility: Being extra flexible can make it easier to move and workout accurately.
- Lower risk of injury: Warming up your body can benefit them relax, which, in turn, can lead to less damage rested Source.
- Increased blood flow and oxygen: Producing more blood flow improves your muscles get the nutriment they require before going into an intense workout.
- Enhanced performance: Warmed up muscles can support your work out more efficiently.
- Better range of motion: Having a more excellent variety of activities can keep you move your joints completely.
- Less muscle tension and pain: Muscles that are warm and relaxed may move faster and with less pain or stiffness.
How long should a warm-up be?
Warm-up exercises
You can do a sport-specific warm-up, or you can try the following warm-up exercises that involve a wide variety of body movements. Collectively, these exercises can better prepare your muscles for the most intense workouts.
You can begin slowly with a more friendly version of every exercise before going into a more challenging movement phase.
Pushups
This famous exercise works your full body, glutes, and core. To make it less complicated, you can do pushups on your knees. Once you’ve warmed up, you can raise the difficulty by pausing in the lower position.
How to do pushup:
Balancing on your knees rather than your feet is a useful modification when you increase your strength.
- Start in a hands and knees position and your gaze at the floor.
- Place your hands on the floor on both sides of your shoulders. Your knees must be at a comfortable distance apart.
- Breathe as you gently lower your elbows to make your chest toward the floor. Make sure your core muscles should be engaged.
- Rest for a second in the lowered position — your chin may slightly touch the floor.
- Blow as you push up from the floor to your starting position.
Planks
Planks are an excellent warmup for strengthening core and back strength and increasing balance and posture. You can challenge your entire body with varieties like the forearm plank and side plank after warming up.
How to do a plank
- Take a pushup position. If you’re doing this first time, you can start by doing a plank on your knees. If you’re advanced, you can do a plank on your forearms. If you’re about in between, you can try doing a high plank with your arms completely stretched.
- Put your palms and toes set firmly on the floor. Your back should be straight and keep your core muscles tight. Don’t let your back and head sag down.
- Keep your plank for 20 seconds to 1 minute.
Squats
Squats are a versatile exercise that targets many of your lower body muscles, including your quads, glutes, and hamstrings. You may feel the first few squats more accessible by just going down halfway.
Then, you gradually increase the difficulty, so the last repetitions are complete squats. After warming up, you can improve the intensity by taking weights when you do your squats.
How to do squat:
- Stand with your feet hip-width aside and turn your toes face out to the side lightly.
- Contract your core, keep your backbone straight, and gently lower your hips until your legs are identical with the floor.
- Pause shortly with your knees over, but not beyond your toes.
- Exhale and get back to the beginning position.
Side lunges
This warm-up exercise works on your lower body and can support strengthen your legs, glutes, and hips. You can make the first few lunges simple by only going halfway down, and then proceed to the complete lunge.
After that, you can improve the challenge by doing a set using dumbbells or opposite hand reaches.
How to do lunge:
- Stand with your feet hip-width aside.
- Push into your right foot as you step your left foot on to the left.
- From here, squat down with bending your left leg and keeping your right leg straight.
- Pause shortly with your left knee over, but not beyond your toes. Lift your hips and return your left foot to the beginning position.
- Perform a lunge to the right side. This is one rep.
Also try our fitness Quiz What Kind Of Exercise Suits You?
