Warming up before training

Benefits of a good warm-up before training

We all have listened many times that we have to warm-up the muscles before starting training, that is good for your muscles and to avoid injuries. Well, today we are going to deepen in this matter.
Warm-up is called to series of exercises that you do before training and that prepare your body to exercise. It works the muscles, tendons and joints, and a good warm-up you doesn’t only improve your performance, reduces the risk of muscular fractures and contractions (pulled muscles). Warming up also:

• Improves muscle elasticity: You don’t need to make strong stretches to increase your elasticity before exercise, just by doing short and simple movements, such as rotations, your muscles become more elastic and allow you more mobility for the following sport.

• Increases correctly the heart rate and your breathing: With this increase, more and more nutrients and oxygen start coming to your muscles, favoring a better performance. Besides, by increasing little by little the heart rate, you don’t force the heart.

• Improves the control of your muscles and your performance: When your muscles are cold you cannot perform certain exercises, and the performance is not as you can expect. This has to do with the brain signaling, that doesn’t let your muscles work at full capacity in order to avoid injuries. Nerve impulses also speed up, what contributes to a better muscle control. Because of these things, cold muscles don’t generate so much strength than warm muscles, what makes you improve your performance after the warm-up. Also, if you start training without warming up the fatigue comes much earlier, what makes you train less.

• It prepares you mentally: if you are in a competition or a physical test, warming up focuses you on what you are about to do. If you are not focused in the routine you want to do, you are not going to push yourself to go further.

• It prevents injuries: By increasing elasticity, you prevent yourself from joint pain, and muscle damage.

For this we should take few minutes for warming up (between 5 and 10 minutes) where you move all the muscles, and try to make similar movements to the movements of the exercise you are going to do.