Are you someone who skips the warm-up?

The warm-up is an essential component of exercise. We frequently meet patients who freely admit that they skip warming up 90% of the time. Whether out of sheer laziness, lack of awareness or know-how, these people are actually working against themselves- they are getting less out of their exercise and, in extreme scenarios, could be setting themselves up for injury and dysfunction. So why is the warm-up so important? Read on to find out.

Benefits of warming up

Where do we even begin? Here are the most important reasons why you should warm-up before every exercise! We are not joking when we say that if you are going to short cut anything, cut your exercise short and opt for the full warm-up. Here are the benefits:

• Gently introducing elasticity to the muscles: no muscles should be plunged into strenuous activity cold! You need to first increase the temperature of your body and muscles. 
• Increasing body and muscle temperature: warmer muscles contract and relax more efficiently, increasing the amount of benefit from the exercise while reducing the risk for injury. 
• Increasing blood temperature: makes oxygen within the blood more available to the muscles your are working out.

The benefits certainly don’t end here, but we hope we have given you sufficient reason to start warming up more frequently. 

Smart solutions for maintaining maximum well-being

Warming up counts as a smart solution because it increases the efficacy of your work out, while also preventing many of the injuries inherent in exercise. At our office in Milpitas, we can show you how to warm up for your particular exercise routine; if you are interested in finding out more, give our office a call to schedule an appointment today.