Avoid Injury, Warm Up Properly

If you exercise even semi-regularly, chances are you know someone who warms up improperly.  It i also very likely that the person is you.

The fact is, if you know that a warm up is necessary before exercise, whether you are performing it correctly or incorrectly, you are way ahead of the proverbial game.

So, what might you be doing wrong? Well, there are two major mistakes people make when warming up before a workout or an athletic event.

One common workout warm up mistake that people make is typically made by men. As a chiropractor who worked as a certified personal trainer for the last eight years, I have seen literally hundreds of men "warm up" by performing one or two light sets of a given exercise before progressing to full weight. The fact is that this is actually part of the proper warm up, alone however, it is simply not enough. This process should be the last step in a proper warm up.

A warm up is self explanatory. It should warm your body up. You need to increase your core body temperature in order to safely use your muscles and joints at rigorous intensity. However, the term "warm up" is part of the problem most of us face when deciding how to get ready for a workout!

The most common warm up mistake is made by both men and women alike -- it's the cardio warm up. You know this person, or at least you have seen him or her. They check in at the gym counter, go straight to an elliptical, a treadmill or a bike, and move for about five to 10 minutes in an attempt to increase heart rate. Once they break a sweat, this person goes straight to the weights and starts lifting.

Much like the person who comes into the gym and does a few light sets before moving heavy weight, the cardio warm up does have a place in your routine. The mistake made is that alone a cardio warm up is not enough to have you ready to move serious weight. The cardio warm up should be the first step in your workout routine, not the only step.

The cardio warm up happens all day at gyms worldwide and it is my opinion that part of the reason for this is the term warm up its self. I prefer to call my pre workout routine "readiness drills." The purpose of readiness drills is to acclimate the body to the tasks you are about to ask it to accomplish.

Let's use baseball as an example. If you have ever attended a Major League Baseball game and you got there early enough to watch the players go through their readiness drills, you would watch the players start their days by running slowly. The purpose of running (cardio warm up) is to gradually increase blood flow thus increasing body temperature. The increase in body temperature allows the player's muscles to become more flexible and, hence, less likely to tear during rigorous use.

Once the players reach their intended body temperature, they gradually increase the speed of their running until finally reaching a full sprint. After acclimating their bodies to running straight, the players begin moving their bodies in all directions that it could possibly be asked to move in during a game, for example, players will run laterally, they will run backwards, they will cut and change direction.

Professional athletes do not limit their time intensive warm up to running. They take the same gradual approach to skills they will implement in a game. A professional baseball player will swing his bat 50 to 100 times at light to moderate intensity before swinging it even once at max intensity! A pitcher can throw a baseball 50 to 100 times before he even takes the mound in the first inning!

You are no different than a professional athlete when it comes to general physiology, so you should be preparing for your workout the same way they prepare for theirs.

A typical day of readiness drills for my training clients includes a multitude of exercises including a cardio sweat, body squats, leg swings, arm circles, air squats, push ups, sit ups, and pull ups. Depending on the exercise program or sport of the day, more specific tasks are used as well.

At our gym, our athletes spend at least five minutes practicing barbell movements with PVC pipe before even reaching for a 45-pound barbell. This is to ensure that the nervous system is communicating properly with the muscles. Your nervous system plays a key role in your ability to move weight or perform athletic activities, to ignore it in a warm up is a sure fire way to limit your ability to be successful.

Your readiness drills should reflect what your workout sets out to accomplish.

Step one: build the sweat for the cardio vascular and muscular systems.

Step two: move the body in ways it will be asked to move when you exercise at full intensity. Do this without resistance at first and at moderate speeds, this will excite your nervous system.

Slowly progress towards heavy resistance at full range of motion and full intensity, this third and most important step merges your musculoskeletal and cardio systems with your nervous system and has you ready to kick butt at anything.

A typical series of readiness drills should take you between 10 and 20 minutes. The physiological changes that your body undergoes in these 10 to 20 minutes will last you about 20 minutes if you should choose to have conversation or stop for any reason between warm up and workout.

"Your warm up is like a workout!" I hear this all the time. You bet it is, and my athletes don't get hurt in the gym.

If you have already experienced injury due to poor exercise execution, you are not alone. You should seek out musculoskeletal care from a chiropractor or physical therapist who is personally physically active at close to the level or beyond the level you are to obtain his or her advice on how you should deal with your problem before it worsens. The reason I always say to choose a professional who is at least as active as you are is because a sedentary individual cannot possibly give you advice on how to safely be active.

Gandhi said it best when a woman asked him "Please tell my child to stop eating sugar." He told the woman "come back in three days."

When she returned in three days he told the child "Stop eating sugar." When she asked why Gandhi needed her to wait three days, he informed her "Three days ago I had not given up eating sugar."

The moral of the story, don't just see someone who says they know, see someone who shows they know every day.

Have a good day, we'll talk again soon.