The Benefits of Warming Up

The warm up is the most important part of the workout and is often overlooked. A good warm up is designed to prepare the muscles, joints, and tendons for strenuous activity but also allows time to mentally prepare for the workout.

Your warm up should be specific to the muscles you are going to exercise. For example, if you are going to do a set of heavy bench presses you should warm up with push ups, light dumbbell shoulder presses, or any other movements that involve the upper body. Activities like jogging on the treadmill will help raise body temperature but will do very little in regards to warming up the elbows and shoulder region which is essential for heavy bench presses.

During your warm up you should start to mentally prepare yourself for the workout. If you are going to run 5 Km then during your warm up you should be thinking about how long the run should take and envision yourself successfully completing the run within this time. The warm up is also an excellent time for self motivation. During the warm up remind yourself of the reasons you are training and the benefits you will obtain.

If you are serious about training and getting results then you must pay attention to every component of your workout. Warming up before your workout needs to be an integral part of your training program and shouldn’t be overlooked.

Comment #1:

I know it is difficult to want to warm up sometimes - you get into the gym, usually pumped from the tunes on the way to the gym, and want to immediately hit the weights. However, I find if I mentally cut out 15 minutes in my mind before I even go to the gym, let alone near the weights, it's not so bad. Cardio and specific stretching is the way I go.

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