A Necessary Warm-Up

Getting a proper warm-up before physical activity is one of the most essential facets of an exercise routine or any other labor intensive endeavor. Although many people consider a warm-up a waste of time, properly initiating activity for your body can help your performance in sport, reduce the likelihood of injury during activity, encourage proper utilization of nutrients and body energy and even in a severe extreme, save your life. Warming up your body is a fairly simple procedure and can be accomplished many different ways but the simple inclusion of a warm-up to your activity can have immeasurable benefit.

The definition of a warm-up is just what it sounds - an slight increasing in body temperature. This is accomplished by simply moving around for a little bit before tackling the task at hand. In some sports like baseball and golf for instance, an athlete will not only warm-up before starting a match but also during the match. Have you ever seen either one of these athletes take a practice swing before attempting to connect with the ball? This quick little practice is going to increase their body temperature very slightly but more importantly for them it is also initiating an musculo-neurologic (muscle and nerve) memory pattern. Warming up is also necessary for loosening stiff and tightened tissues both within joints and your blood and lymphatic vessels. Finally warming up can help to encourage passage of essential nutrients and water in and out of your cells to keep up their energy and enable your body to work at a higher level longer.

Types of Warm-Up:

Cardiovascular - A cardiovascular warm up is simply a method of gradually increasing your body’s temperature, breathing patterns and heart rate to a level elevated above rest enough to allow you to safely perform exercise. This is probably the most common warm up in a gym or fitness setting as cardiovascular equipment is usually readily available. To achieve cardiovascular warm-up simply initiate movement (biking, jogging, rowing, swimming, elliptical) at an easy pace for five to ten minutes or until your body feels loose. Don’t attack the machine right away. Rather ease into the exercise starting at a slow pace and slowly increase your intensity until your breathing, heart rate, and body temperature have risen.

Stretching - Stretching can be used as a warm up as long as the body is not too cold initially. Dancers, athletes, and even heavy laborers will often use a mild stretch to get their body ready to tackle the coming activity. Both static and dynamic stretching are acceptable means of warming up the body, although the dynamic method may take a little less time because of the greater amount of energy needed to engage in a dynamic stretch. (See “Is Stretching Necessary?” in February of ’08 for more information on types of stretching.) When stretching for a warm-up, like the cardiovascular method, the initial stretch should be mild and should gradually increase in intensity as your body adjusts to the activity. Be sure to stretch the parts of the body which you intend to use, as a simple stretch of body parts unrelated to your endeavor won’t be as productive. A static stretch warm-up will usually last about 10 to 20 minutes depending on the ensuing activity and a dynamic stretch will require between 5 and 15 minutes for a proper warm-up.
NOTE: Some professionals will distinguish between stretching and calisthenics for warming up, but in this context, mild calisthenics falls under the dynamic stretching category.

Breathing and Meditating - These methods of warm-up are derived from eastern practices like yoga and martial arts and may be a bit more difficult to engage for satisfactory results. It is possible to increase one’s breathing, heart rate, and even your body temperature through sheer concentration and methodical breathing methods, but again, this is a skill unto itself and is not usually successful without proper training. If you are capable of proper meditation or pranayama yoga, you can use these energies as a successful warm up but it may take 15 minutes or more. Many people who engage in such eastern practices find them to be the most soothing manner of initiating a new activity, but they are not for everyone.

Benefits of a Warm-Up:

Musculo-skeletal (muscles and bones) - In a sedentary state, the one part of our body that possibly gets the most rest is our structure. Our muscles require an incredible amount of our internal energy to enact movement and, naturally, more aggressive or intense movements increase that energy expenditure. Therefore, when our muscles don’t have to do anything, they don’t. Neither do the tendons, ligaments, and other soft tissues associate with our physical internal structure. Because they are relatively inactive in a resting state, they are not prepared to immediately initiate high intensity movement. Muscles and other structural soft tissues in your joints and along your bones require great amounts of fluid and lubrication as well - much like the moving parts of a car. When active, these tissues are flooded with lubrication and energy to keep the body moving. When inactive, however, imagine these tissues as a sponge that sits on the side of your sink - when it’s not being used, it slowly dries out and becomes brittle - so too do our tissues. To warm-up the sponge we need simply to run it through water. To warm-up our muscular and connective tissues, we need to engage in one of the three aforementioned methods. Imagine how that sponge would feel if you tried to wash a cheese grater without putting some water on it first? This is how your joints feel without the proper warm-up, and they’ll let you know by aching later.

Neuro-muscular (muscles and nerves) - In order for our body to work, your muscles must be in constant communication with your nerves and your control centers in your brain and spinal column. If you are going to engage in a task of skill in which the motions of the task are unnatural or require practiced precision, a warm-up will be necessary to initiate and enhance proper neuro-muscular pathways. This is one reason a baseball player and golfer will take a few practice swings before attacking the ball. Other activities require similar nervous stimulation: just about any sport, dance, or labor which will require a good deal of physical control. You may not need a warm up to pick up a pencil, but its a good idea to warm up if you are going to repeatedly lift and carry bags of concrete for instance. And remember, if you were in a resting state before tackling the activity, your muscles are in a state of lethargy anyhow so they need a little kick start.

Cardio-vascular (heart and blood vessels) This is where a warm-up can be life saving. As we age, all of the tissues in our body lose their structural integrity to some extent. Our soft tissues become harder, and our hard tissues become softer and more brittle. It is just the way nature takes its toll on your body over the years. Some of the soft tissues in your body make up your heart and blood vessels. These too will naturally harden as you get older. If you combine this natural hardening with the additional stiffening and blockage caused by excessive cholesterol you could have a small bomb waiting to go off in your body. If you increase your blood pressure too quickly by engaging in severe activity without warming up, this fragile point in your blood vessels may not be able to take the strain and could rupture. This, of course, is not good. However, even if you do have a blockage of some sort in your arteries, a nice, slow warm up will help the stiff tissues loosen and decrease the chance of an increase in blood pressure causing a rupture. If you are elderly, or are at risk for blood pressure related maladies, discuss with your doctor the necessary precautions for starting an exercise program. A good cardio-vascular warm up could take 10 minutes or more if you are in a risk category.

Cellular - This benefit was discussed in relation to both muscle tissue and heart and vessel tissue. A good warm-up promotes fluid and nutrient exchange within our cells. This exchange is vital to keep our joints lubricate, our nerves communicating, our muscles moving, and our heart, vessels, and lungs flexible to the onset of a new activity. Every change in our body happens at a cellular level and your whole body is of course made of cells. This means that every part of your body benefits from a warm-up.

The last thing to note about a warm-up is that it has to be in immediate proximity to the activity in which you will be partaking. You can’t warm up at home then drive to the gym and expect it to still be effective. Your body is too quick to recover and much of your tissue will have returned to it’s dry sponge state from sitting in the car. A warm-up needs to occur immediately before the exercise. Different people find they require different amounts of time to warm up. The recommended time frame is 5 minutes for most activity, but I personally like 10 because I feel my body is not yet ready to perform optimally with 5 minutes. Some people who have chronic pain or other conditions may feel best from a full 15 to 20 minute warm up such that they are nearly sweating before even beginning the task at hand. In general, you can’t warm-up too much as long as your temperature increase is mild and gradual. You can easily, however, not warm-up enough or, heaven forbid, not at all...