If you have been working out for some time now and feeling a weird muscle pain, which has yet not subsided, then chances are you it is because you have been skipping on warm-up and cool-down exercises.
Following a proper warm-up and cool-down routine helps your body become accustomed to the intense workout that is about to come and similarly helps your body relax after an intense workout session. Lack of proper warm-up and cool-down exercises could lead to muscle injuries and muscle soreness in the long term.
Benefits of Warming Up
- Better Performance: Warming up helps in improving your athletic performance.
- Better Blood Flow: All you need is 10 minutes to warm up if you want your body to adapt to your intense workout session. With proper warm-up movements, you can increase the flow of blood to your skeletal muscles, and open up blood vessels for healthy blood circulation. Your blood conveys the oxygen required for your muscles to work, increasing the flow of your blood to prepare your muscles for an intense exercise session.
- Oxygen Efficiency: When you do a warm-up workout, the oxygen in your blood moves more readily and promptly throughout your body, and at higher temperatures. Your muscles request higher measures of oxygen while working out, so make this oxygen more accessible through a warm-up action.
- Better Contraction and Relaxation of Muscle: Warming up with active work raises your internal heat level, which thusly, further develops your nerve transmission and muscle metabolism. What happens next? Your muscles will perform quicker and all the more effectively.
- Injury Prevention: Warming up forestall wounds by releasing your joints, and further developing bloodstream to your muscles — making your muscles more averse to tear, tear, or bend in an unsafe way during your exercise. Extending likewise readies your muscles for the proactive tasks you’re going to perform.
- Mental Preparation: A side advantage of heating up is that your mind will become zeroed in on your body and your active work as you go through the cycle. This center will persist into your instructional meeting to assist you with working on your method, coordination, and ability.
Advantages of Cooling Down
- Recuperation: After extreme exercise, lactic acid develops inside your body, and it takes a lot of time and effort for your body to get it out. Cooling down exercises can help your body in getting rid of lactic acid, helping with accelerating your body’s recuperation post-exercise.
- Preventing DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness): While muscle soreness is not out of the ordinary after a workout, a lot of DOMS could be painful and can keep you from working out later on. Cooling down after exercise helps with mitigating unbearable muscle soreness, allowing you to work out efficiently, and allowing your body to get back from the reprecuration period to the next workout session easily.
A moderate cycling, spot jogging, or simple breathing exercise could help your body in preparing as well as relaxing both before and after the workout. So, no matter if you have time or not, do not forget to include warm-up and cool-down exercises in the workout routine.