Warm Up First

5 tips about its importance and correct procedure.

By Henry Hernández
Special to ChulucanasGym

What's the first  you gotta do when starting a training session at your home, the gym, or outdoors? The first you gotta do is warming up.

Its purpose is preparing your whole body in general and each muscular group in particular  for the serious part of  the training, whatever  you have chosen - power, resistance, functional. If you skip this step, the risk you suffer from injuries  is high.

For you to understand its importance, I invite to think of a piece of raw clay. If you propose to use it plastically for giving the wished form, it is going to break or it is not going to be molded like you want. That's why first it is worked out, warming it up by using the hands, so when the molding to begin is easier.

More or less it's the same principle with your body. 

Now, what every pupil asks me when I start to train him, and I request him to warm up, it's how to make it correctly. It's not only about moving. Here I give you 5 tips those you must never forget.

1. Stretch correctly
What are you going to work out today? Well, the first you must remember, when a muscular group is worked out, is you have an agonistic and an antagonistic muscle, I mean, a muscle that makes the action and another that opposes or balances such action.
The trick is stretching both muscles. For example, if you do squads, stretch gluteus and hamstrings (the muscles of your buttocks  and those are located in the back part of your tights, respectively)
The stretches allow to prepare articulations and muscles better, so you don't cramp  at the less expected moment. That's why this step is important.
Plan with your trainer  the muscles to stretch, the way and the time to be dedicated to this moment.

2. Be aware about reps
This is key because the function of warming up is to prepare the body, not doing all the effort in one slam, so when you begin the main routine, you don't have any wish to continue. I ever advice to do about 2 sets of 20-25 repetitions.
As lasting as your body develops, we can increase the number of sets or the number of repetitions, but if you're a beginner, that would be the recommendable.

3 Keep your body heat
I mean you rest the just time that allows you to recover but that unallows your muscle gets cold. when you train, the move produces certain little heat. So, the idea is not losing it. And that little heat is gotten by doing many reps. Thus, you activate and catch the wave.
Look! - This moment is important because here is when we really start to work out. Then if it is crucial, you'll understand you must never dismiss it and doing it correctly.

4. Control your resting time
Not too brief that you tire out inmediatly, not too long that you get cold and you have to start from the beginning everytime.
Depending on your grade, the routine type, and the time you dedicate to it, the resting times can last 30, 20, or 15 seconds. Ever start with 30 to setting you up progressively, even if you return to train after many time (for example, more than 3 months)

5. Get focused totally
Although there are colleagues who forget it and there are pupils who think this is a waste of time, the importance of balancing your mind and your body during a training session is so crucial that it reflects on the results. I see pupils at the gym who really get it, and pupils who laugh on their backs. And I laugh on who laugh because they don't know what they do.
Getting focused  or being concentrated means you are concious of the actual time, the move you do, how you're breathing, what reactions your body experience, and especially how you're managing the distraction.
Before moving any muscle, learn to take a time for you, leaving all your life out the training space, and noticing how you breathe. Try to regulate your inhalations and exhalations until they happen naturarily, so deep that you feel your lungs to fill, then letting them empty for receiving the next air load.
When you catch it, have eberything you need to train close to you, listen carefully to the instructions of who is guiding you, do every rep and set realizing about you do and how you do it, watching your rests, paying attention to the change of exercise just in case.
Learn to visualize yourself in your mind with the whole physical achievement you're looking for. Believe it or not, this mental exercise favors possitively the physical exercise because it gets your body ready to get the maximum advantage from the effort you do. Hold the visualization during the main routine and once you finish.
When your session ends, ever express gratitude to yourself, to the one who support you, and to what is around you. You'll see when you retake your life, everything will be seen different and even easier.

whenever, I'll feel happy to receive your questions in here or directly to my Facebook account where we can chat in private.