Time crunch? Sub in a warmup for a workout
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 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 workout. If that happens to you, at least do a warmup. The most important reason for doing a warmup 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 start to fade and diminish. That will begin within a week. If you get no exercise for two weeks, you can lose as much as 10 per cent of your fitness, according to many scientific studies.
That’s the reason you feel so shaky when you get up after you’ve been bedridden with something like the flu or a condition that required hospitalization.
The worst part is that you can’t rush to regain the lost fitness. It must be done slowly and carefully so that the now-weaker muscles and connective tissue (tendons and ligaments) get back to their former strength and flexibility without being injured.
Meanwhile, if you can’t get to the gym or outside for a run or a bike ride, a good warmup will give you many of the benefits of a more serious workout. A warmup is basically ‘going through the motions.’ It can include jogging in place, squatting and standing up 10 times, swinging your arms in circles, bending joints by twisting and flexing your body or any other kind of movement that pumps blood into the muscles.
A thorough warmup 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.
Never do a warmup just before bedtime. That kind of activity may make it harder to fall asleep or to stay asleep. Don’t do it upon getting up in the morning; because your body needs to ‘wake up’ after being relatively still for (hopefully) eight hours.
After you have raised the temperature in the muscles and tissues of your body, it’s a good time to stretch. Connective tissues will be softer and more pliable so you will get a greater range of motion in the stretch, making you more flexible. Flexibility is important for any athlete, whether a newbie or a professional.
Some good moves to make in a warmup include squatting down on the balls of your feet and balancing for 10 seconds, bringing the elbows out to the side and lifting them as high as possible, and doing walking lunges across the room and back again while balancing your body mass between both legs.
Going through the motions is useful after a long flight or even a long drive. Restoring mobility by making the body warmer internally will help retain your fitness even if you’re not in the gym.