Why Warm Up?
By: Josh Proch, CSCS, Pn1
Did you know that the first 10 minutes of your workout will play the biggest role in keeping your body healthy and avoiding an injury?
That’s right. While the warm-up may seem boring and is tempting to skip over, it can have big rewards for your body ensuring you move well and get the most out of your workouts
In a typical Warm-Up at Pittsburgh North Fitness we will do the following:
Breathing. Take a deep breath. Did your shoulders raise? If so, that’s because you are a chest breather. Proper breathing happens through the diaphragm, or belly breathing. When we breath right it creates a positive effect on every aspect of our body such as, how we move, our health, how our core functions, and even our anxiety. Since most people don’t breathe right, we take 5-10 slow deep belly breaths to reset and reinforce proper breathing.
Stretch the hips and wake up the butt. Did you drive to work, sit at a desk or in meetings all day, then drive home to sit some more at your kids’ practice? If you’re like most people you sit a lot. That doesn’t make you a bad person, just a person with tight hip flexors and a really weak, flat butt. Which is why we want to stretch out the hip flexors and wake up the butt, aka the glutes. Our two favorites are the ½ Kneeling Hip Flexor and the Single Leg Glute Bridge to address this.
Open up those slouched shoulders. Are you leaning over your phone with your head down reading this? Again, due to the amount of time spend sitting each day our shoulders tend to start slouching forward and our heads move forward, wreaking havoc on our posture. So, to address this we open up the chest and stretch out those tight muscles and then turn on our upper back muscles to the pull our shoulders back and down. Address this each time you warm-up and you will begin to notice that you are standing taller and not carrying as much tension in your neck and shoulders.
Turn on the core. A strong core means we have a strong healthy body, after all our core is what holds everything together. But again, due to our sedentary lifestyle that has us sitting with bad posture our core tends to get weak.
Move the body. In each warm-up we like to include 1-2 total body movements like a squat, lunge, or push up. This gets some full body movement and directly preps your body for what is about to come.
Charge up the body. The same way that a computer or generator needs to power up so does our body. We like to do this through a circuit we call Jump, Throw, Carry. This circuit turns everything on and gets the muscles ready to work. Here is how you do it. Start with a type of jump for 3-5 reps, we like Squat Jumps or Broad Jumps, but this will depend on your fitness level. Next we do a medicine ball throwing exercise for 5 reps. And finally finish with a Carry, we like the Farmer’s Carry for 50 yards. Repeat this circuit for two rounds.
It might seem like this is a lot, but it only takes about eight minutes to get through and will ensure that your body feels better, moves better, gives you a better workout, and most importantly you will stay healthier and get better results.
If you are looking to get started with a fitness plan check out our 30-Day Personal Training Experience…
https://pittsburghnorthfitness.lpages.co/30-day-personal-training-experience/
