Prevent Injury and Improve Performance with Warm-up Exercises

Regular exercise has many benefits, but poor training techniques can lead to tightness, injury & pain.

Sprains & strains are the most common traumatic injuries, whilst gradual onset problems often relate to imbalances in your body’s movement patterns.

This commonly includes shoulder and knee pain, tendinitis, & some types of back & neck pain. Warming up can help prevent many of these injuries as well as improve your performance, but often people are unsure about exactly what to do. Here are a few benefits & tips on using a quick & easy warm-up routine.

The first benefit of warming up is injury prevention. As body temperature & muscle circulation increase, your muscle flexibility improves. When combined with stretches, this increased flexibility helps prevent strains by reducing the risk of forcing a muscle beyond it’s comfortable length during exercise.

This improved flexibility also reverses progressive tightening of some muscles that occurs with regular training, thereby reducing imbalances within the muscular system & the risk of gradual-onset problems.

It’s not just your muscles that need protecting during exercise – you need to care for your joints too. A good warm-up will improve joint lubrication so that less strain is placed on your cartilage. Also, as muscle co-ordination and control is improved there is less shearing stress across your joints. This reduces the risk of excessive movement that may sprain ligaments & damage joint surfaces.

An often overlooked benefit of warm-up exercises is improved performance. The increased blood circulation delivers more oxygen to the working muscles, maximising their efficiency right from the start of your exercise session. Better muscle function improves co-ordination & skill levels, & ultimately enhances performance.

So what makes a good warm-up routine? There are many sport-specific and complex routines, but the easiest and quickest involve just three basic phases:

General: this consists of 6-10 minutes of low-medium intensity exercise such as jogging, cycling or swimming. The intensity should start low, & slowly increase as your heart, muscles & joints respond.
Stretching: this should include the major muscle groups, & individual factors such as injury or the type of exercise may mean that extra time is spent stretching certain muscles.

There are many theories about the most effective stretch routine, but a general guide is 15 second holds & 3-5 repetitions.
Sport-specific: this involves practicing the specific movements to be used in your exercise. For sports such as swimming & running it simply means progressing up to your full training pace. For resistance training, before you do your training sets do a set using less weight but more repetitions.

For racquet & team sports, practice the skills such as hitting, passing & pivoting that you are about to use. This process actually enhances the co-ordination of your nervous & muscular systems, improving performance and reducing the risk of injury.

• These fast and simple warm-up tips can help you prevent injury and improve performance. They are easy to work into your normal exercise routine, and can help you stay fit and healthy with safe and regular exercise.

Disclaimer: This article provides information of a general nature and is not a substitute for individual professional treatment. Before acting on this information you should contact Precision Physio or your regular health practitioner to determine if the information is appropriate for your particular circumstances.