The basics of warming up

    Warming up is like eating your vegetables. 

    Everyone knows you supposed to eat them, but it's not the highlight of the meal. (Unless you're a vegan.... then your just weird.... just kidding.... or am I?). Same with warmups before exercise. We all know we should be conducting them it's just a matter of doing them. I'm a bad offender at properly warming up since I hop on the treadmill on a low speed and set up my work out for the day. I plug all my entire workout on my phone. This way I do not have to guess what I am doing next-I already know. When you work out at 5am you need this forward thinking as you have a deadline to get everything done before work.

  

   If I can sum up the purpose of warm-ups in one sentence is would be: Warmups are designed to mentally and physically prepare someone for exercise. Warm-up can be active or passive. Passive warm-ups are sitting in your car on a cold day and using the seat warmers to warm up your body. It is a fairly ineffective technique since A) you got to embrace the cold to get out of the car and B) You typically have to check in anyway rendering your seat warm up worthless. Active warmups on the other hand involve movement geared to increased muscle temperature, core temperature and increased neural function. If you exercise at the same time every day or close to it your body becomes acclimated and neural adaptations occur. As you can imagine these all apply to temperature related effects on the body. Non-temperature factors include increased blood flow, increased baseline oxygen and increased post activation potentiation. Warm-ups typically involve faster muscle contractions, increased rate of force development, increased muscle strength and power and as we touched on earlier increased mental preparedness. I should say that warm-ups do not directly prevent injuries they do apply secondary applications that do prevent injuries. With increased blood flow and increased body temperature muscles can increase a resistance to muscle tears.

    The actual warm up consists of two distinct phases: General and Specific. General warmups are just that-general movements to get the body moving to increase heart rate, blood flow and deep muscle temperature. Slow, aerobic activity such as biking, skipping, jogging or even walking is conducted for five minutes followed by general static stretching to replicate the activity at hand. For example, before leg day one could slowly bike for 5 minutes then perform a series of air squats and lunges. After the general warm-up a more specific warm up is needed. Apart of the specific warm up is the general increase in intensity and rehearsal of the skill at hand. In our example one could squat with just bar then slowly add in weight to prepare the body for a heavier squat. Ideally, specific warmups increase body temperature without causing fatigue or zap the body of energy needed to perform. In most cases this entire process lasts between 10-20 minutes. This time frame is not set in stone as time and training session dictate warmups. Some days require less warm-ups while other training sessions that require most intensity would require more time. Comparatively, squatting for three sets on a light day involves less of a warmup period while maxing out involves more warm up time.

    Once the warm-up period concludes it is most beneficial to get into the training activity for the day. Taking more than 15 minutes between warm up and activity loses the effects of the warm-up. Warming up then taking a phone call or mindlessly scrolling through Facebook or Instagram would not be ideal. Stay focused at the gym to maximize performance.