The warm-up is part of the training process, which is often missed, tortured, or conducted incorrectly. This, in addition to causing trauma, reduces the effectiveness of the workout because warming prepares the body to handle the optimal target load.

Of course, every fitness instructor will advise you to warm up before training. But how exactly do you warm up so that the workout is done as efficiently and safely as possible?
The nature of warming depends on the type of sport you are dealing with. Sprinters, for example, warm up 30-45 minutes before training.



But the sprinter's specificity requires explosive muscular effort at the maximum intensity that, in the absence of good warming, can be very traumatic - muscle growth, tears, and more. So letting the sprinters go aside, they are still professional athletes.

How should all fitness enthusiasts warm up when they cross the threshold of the gym?

The warming depends on the intensity and the exercises you will use in the workout. But generally speaking, you have to prepare your cardio-respiratory system, your locomotory system, and your nervous system for the upcoming workload. And this is quite often done methodologically wrong.



The preparation of the cardio-respiratory system aims to gradually increase the pulse rate and increase the frequency and depth of breathing. This speeds up blood circulation and, accordingly, the supply of oxygen and nutrients to working muscles and the removal of waste products. Heat and heat generation processes are also activated, which will protect the body from overheating during the training.



You can warm up any cardio-respiratory cardio-respirator, but I recommend it to be a bicycle or crosshair. It takes 5-10 minutes for you to gradually increase and maintain the pulse within 60-70% of the maximum. The younger and the more advanced work faster than the elderly and the beginner. The onset of the sweat shows that the heart rate has increased sufficiently.



After a cardiovascular warm-up, you should warm the musculoskeletal system and adapt the nervous system to the stress, especially if you exercise more intensely. Here is the main mistake of most trainees and the wrong approach to this type of warming. It is a common sight for the trainer to enter the room, twist his wrists, elbows, and shoulders several times, wringing a few dumbbells a few times, and throwing straight into the weights and then wondering why he was injured after he had warmed up.

Yes, this kind of warming may have its place, although, in my opinion, it is absolutely unnecessary.




Do it if you feel better about it. But such a warm-up will neither protect you from injuries nor improve the effectiveness of your workout if you miss what follows, namely: warm up with the exercise that is first in your program but with a lighter weight - up to 50 % of the maximum and reps in the range of 12-20. This is actually the most important part of the warm-up because it prepares the muscles, joints and the nervous system to the specifics of the movement you are going to perform.

This is how you work on a movement that you will actually use in your workout because the rotation of the helicopter-tipped hand is not one of them and will not protect you from the lesion if you are not warm-up on it, ie. if you first lift from bed - warm up with a lift if you are going to make a dead thrust - warm up with thrust.



The light warm-up series also improve the mind-muscle connection and allows you to include a maximum number of drive units in the workshop series. For those unfamiliar, I will mention that a motor unit (DE) is called muscle fibers inserted by a motor neuron.

Accordingly, the more you participate in the exercise, the larger the muscle is, and you can work with heavier weights. The trainees who save the series with the idea of preserving their strength, in addition to increasing the risk of injuries, actually train with fewer burdens than their real possibilities, ie. receive a "ban" from the nervous system to use maximum weights. This is the way the central nervous system tries to keep you from shit to lift heavy weights without getting warm.

The mild series is like "telling" the brain: "everything is fine, there is no danger of trauma," which improves nerve impulses to the muscles and involves more EDs, allowing you to work with heavier weights.



How many such warm-ups you need depends on the size of your workload and the intensity of your workout as well as the exercise itself. With large workloads and multiple base movements, you may need several such series. I, for example, before I get to my workload when lifting the bar from a chill, first I make 2-3 series with only an empty lever, then some more series with gradual weight gain.
However, if you do not exercise very intensively or your workloads are still relatively small, even just one such warm-up series may be enough.

Only after you make the first one or two warm-up series you can apply a slight stretching for the muscle group you will be training. This stretching should not be very intense, and you may even miss it if you have very weak muscle tone and/or hypermobility of the joints.



When you start with the next exercise, you will need a warm-up series even if it is for the same muscle group as the load angle is different. However, it is not necessary for the warming series to be as much as in the first exercise. If you warm up with five series, you may need two if you have third and fourth and only one will be enough.

When switching to the first exercise for another muscle group, you need to repeat the warm-up series.

We are certain that there are people who claim that the warming described above is insufficient and will continue to follow obsolete dogmas and beliefs, including "crunching" at the waist, "breaking" of fingers and all sorts of twists and strains. Well, once they feel more comfortable about their safety, there is no problem, as long as they do not hurt with such exercises, and then they get really warm.