The big deal about warming up

In case you’re wondering, here’s what happens to your body when you warm up:

• Bloodflow through your muscles increases, which enhances the delivery of oxygen from your blood, and the speed of your nerve impulses increases. Both of these factors make your muscles work better.
• Your heart rate increases, which primes your cardiovascular system to handle the increased load from your workout.
• Your body and tissue temperature gently increase, which helps prevent injury by slowly increasing your body’s core temperature, which allows your blood pressure to stay regulated.
• Muscular tension decreases, and your connective tissue has an enhanced ability to lengthen, which in turn enhances your performance and decreases the likelihood of injury.
• You slowly and gently ease into the right frame of mind for the exertion of a good workout. This mindset prevents you from getting tired out or overdoing it if you start out exercising too vigorously.

Here’s what may happen if you don’t warm up:

• You may pull a muscle if you start stretching out “cold” and no blood or oxygen is circulating and flowing to the area.
• You may become short of breath or dizzy from your heart rate increasing too quickly. _ You may cause injury to a joint from launching into quick movements without first loosening up the surrounding tissue.

When you try to save five minutes before you exercise and skip your warm-up, you can pull a muscle. If that happens, you can’t exercise at all for two weeks while you heal (and limp around, sleep badly, and generally live with the pain). Five minutes versus two weeks — do the math. I’m no math major, but even I can see that warming up before you work out makes more sense than not doing so.