TL;DR

1.      Treat it as part of the workout

2.      Use the warm-up you need today

3.      Full-body is the best

The goal of today’s blog is to give you the tools you need to create fantastic warm-ups that bring you closer to your goals, while preventing injuries along the way. Ottawa has phenomenal opportunities for biking, skiing, hiking, and sports so it’s only right that we use an excellent warm-up to maximize our ability to enjoy our activity!

Warmups can be time-consuming and boring, but they don’t have to be.

We can approach the warmup as a crucial part of the workout. Our bodies adapt to the stimuli we place on them, and we can use our warmup to bring us closer to our goals. A circuit warmup performed 3 times with 3 exercises of 20 reps each can quickly and easily add up to 180 additional reps to the areas of the body we are targeting. An extra 180 reps performed 3 times a week for a full year, targeted at our weak points can really make an impact; that’s 28080 extra reps a year, exclusively building up the areas we may otherwise neglect. And all those reps can be done with a simple 5-10 minute warmup each workout that gets us moving and increases our heart rate.

Occasional stiffness, aches and soreness are parts of life, but a dynamic warmup can address this before they worsen.

Depending on the day, we may find our back feels tight compared to our hips, or our shoulders feel sore or our knees feel achy. We can modify our warmup to target achy or stiff areas and prime our bodies for fantastic movement. Imagine targeting our warmups to help heal our sciatica, our achy shoulders or our sore backs. Warmups are a great opportunity to incorporate the rehab exercises or movement patterns that we are working on to prevent injuries that may impact our ability to perform our favourite activities.

A strategic warmup should include at minimum an upper body movement, a core movement, and a lower body movement.

Whether we are running, swimming, biking, lifting weights or playing our favourite sports, we are going to be using our full body. Our warmups should reflect that, and a full body warmup is an awesome way to reduce injury and improve performance. Choosing 3 simple exercises that can get the blood flowing to our upper body, our core, and our lower body is a great way to prepare for activity.

Next blog post I’ll be sharing some examples of different warmups I’ve grown to love depending on the activities or exercises I’ll be doing.

If you are struggling with injury or pain with movement, book an appointment today. We will help you return to family, work and sport, pain-free and confident in your body.