Sub in a warm-up when you can’t work out
Your overall strength and conditioning suffer if you’re inactive too long
Unless you are an elite athlete making money from your sport, it’s hard to stay religious about conditioning. At times, there will come an irresistible urge to skip your scheduled training.
You may be tired, the gym may be too crowded, or you simply may not feel like working out. You may be out of town and days may go by before you get back to your regular training sessions. If that happens to you, at least do a warm-up. The most important reason for doing a warm-up during those times when your exercise program is skipped is that it will help slow down your loss of fitness.
The fact is, muscles have no loyalty. They don’t care how dutifully you worked out last month. If you’re not exercising now, your strength, flexibility and conditioning will fade and diminish. That will begin within a week. If you get no exercise for two weeks, you can lose as much as 10 percent of your fitness, according to many scientific studies. A thorough warm-up will work all the muscles and joints of the body. An energetic one can make you sweat. Kick up the speed and it will be an aerobic workout. While a good training session should last at least an hour, warming up the body needs only 15 minutes.
After you have raised the temperature in the muscles and tissues of your body, it’s a good time to stretch. Some good moves to warm up include squatting down on the balls of your feet and balancing for 10 seconds, bringing the elbows out to the side and lifting them high , and doing walking lunges across the room.
Going through the motions is useful after a long drive. Restoring mobility to the body by making it warmer internally will help you retain your fitness even if you’re not in the gym.