Warming-Up or Breaking Down?
When most people hear the word “warm-up” they think of a myriad of things. Whether it’s back in grade school gym class where you’d hold stretches for a 10 count, the drills your old coach would give you from football before you learned plays, or even what potentially happens at the beginning of a group fitness class. We have all been introduced to this thing called a “warm-up”.
Science and it’s application of it have moved on from the above examples. Meaning, statically stretching before any sort of bout of exercise will weaken those muscles abilities to produce force.
A quote from the article “Stretching: The Truth” states:
“There is a neuromuscular inhibitory response to static stretching,” The straining muscle becomes less responsive and stays weakened for up to 30 minutes after stretching, which is not how an athlete wants to begin a workout.
What a warm-up should do is loosen the muscles to increase range of motion of those muscles and joints you are planning to use; And, literally warm-up the body.
Movement = increased blood flow = dilated blood vessels = easy access to pull oxygen from the bloodstream = ability to use stored muscle fuel more effectively
So, what is the best way to go about this….
I personally use exercise specific warm-ups.
How this looks:
I choose an exercise to be done at a slower pace with little to no weight to see where your ranges of motion are and what your ability is to execute the exercise. After a few reps, your range is opening up. We then decide if those are your stopping points by making you stop at each end of the range of motion we have identified. Making it increasingly more difficult even with the little to no weight. THEN it’s time to go to work. Adding weight, increasing or decreasing speed, adding stops at each end of the motion, etc. (sounds hard, huh? It is!)
What I have found with an exercise specific warm-up is there is little to no room for error. Which is a win-win for your body and stops you from doing the YMCA as a warm-up dance. (Scratch that - you should definitely do the YMCA if you are at the YMCA)
Any who...
What type of exercises would you like to see an “exercise specific warm-up” to?
Comment below!
Citation:
Reynolds, G. (2008, October 28). Stretching: The Truth. The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/sports/playmagazine/112pewarm.html?_r=6&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
