No matter what kind of exercises you are about to do, you always have to warm up before a workout. Besides warming up the muscles, which is mandatory, here we’ll include another, often neglected aspect of warmups.
How many times have you heard people about having knee problems, can’t do squats, lower back pain to the exclusion of deadlifting, joint pains, various injuries – which can result in longer periods of no exercise or frequents breaks.
It’s very likely to have such problems if you don’t apply these principles.
These principles are not just to prevent injuries. The goal is to make it possible for joints and connective tissues to become stronger together with muscles.
First – “lubricate” your joints before you start exercising.
Joints contain a substance which prevents friction and enables them to move smoothly. As the workout does heavily larger pressure over joints, you need more lubrication than usual.
Heavy weights do not hurt joints. Heavy weights certainly hurt non-lubricated joints.
You need about 5 minutes warming up to lubricate joints. The best way to lubricate them is by rotational movements.
This video gives these movements.
Caution – as a warmup DO ONLY THE ROTATIONAL MOVEMENTS shown on the video, not the stretching moves.
Each rotation for each joint is done at least 10 times in one and then 10 times in the other direction.
Second – warming up muscles after you’re done with the joints:
Begin every exercise with around 20-30% of the max weights. Do one set with 10 reps, then increase the weights and do 6-7 reps. Then again add weights, 5 reps and thus you end the warm up for that exercise with 3-4 warmup sets. When you get to the planned maximum, then you start the real sets for that exercise.
The importance of this must not be underestimated. It is not about how heavy can you lift, but about the sudden pressure over the joints, cartilage, ligaments, tendons. There must not be a sudden, high load, but a gradual one.
This also warms up muscles and readies the body for the heavier efforts. Warming up the muscles is as important and this is the whole philosophy of how you do it.
Third – isolation exercises against compound exercises.
The practice of doing mostly isolation exercises does not allow for adequate response of testosterone and the human growth hormone which are key to healing, building and strengthening the muscle and the body as a whole. Here enter other factors as absorbing nutrients, as the growth hormone is key to using protein and minerals as building materials. With inadequate natural levels of growth hormone, healing and strengthening will also be inadequate. Not having enough growth hormone and testosterone inhibits the mechanism of how muscles grow, and this mechanism works for every part of the body, joints, bones, ligaments, etc. You need compound exercises in every workout.
The effect of not applying these recommendations is not always visible at once. It can accumulate insidiously during weeks, months even years. And suddenly it becomes a problem. “Why are my knees so sensitive, I train, they should be stronger.”
And someone tells you your training weights are too heavy and that that exercise damages the knees. Lo and behold, a dangerous exercise. 😀
Warming up before a workout is needed as water and air.
