How to properly warm up your muscles before sports performance?
In order to perform at your best, you need to prepare well. Not only by training enough, but also by taking care of your muscles. It is important to warm them up properly before exercising. However, many people underestimate this and risk injury. How to warm up your muscles properly?
Beware of static stretching
Do you stretch like they taught us in school? Bend forward a little and touch your toes with your knees bent... Static stretching It will increase flexibility and stretch muscles, but it will also deactivate muscle fibers and will not reduce the risk of injury during exercise.
Static stretching is suitable when you are looking to increase flexibility, not strength performance.
Dynamic stretching
It warms up the body, reduces the risk of injury, and prepares you for performance. Dynamic stretching utilizes the full range of motion of the muscles.
Dynamic stretches include lunges, squats, or the so-called Frankenstein walk .
Warm up before exercise
Prepare your body for maximum performance . Warm up your muscles and give them dynamic stretching. This will make them more flexible, more resistant to injury, better able to handle stress, and produce more force.
Running or cycling
Get started easy running and running alphabet (lifting, skipping, squats) or a short bike ride. 5-10 minutes is enough . This will increase blood flow to the muscles and your heart rate . The necessary hormones will begin to be released into the body.
Dynamic stretching
Engage as many joints in your body as possible . Focus on your spine, shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles. Include:
- Wrist, elbow and shoulder rotations in both directions (15 seconds each side)
- Circling with a rubber or wooden handle forward and backward
- Torso rotation from side to side with arms overhead (again holding the rubber band or handle)
- Push-ups with a rubber band hooked behind the back
- Cranks
- Squats
- Lunges
- Movement of the leg originating from the hip joint from front to back (so-called Frankenstein walk)
You can also lightly warm up your muscles before exercising with the help of various warming herbal gels . You will reduce the likelihood of possible injury and help areas that are under a lot of strain.
Don't forget to stretch after exercise
It will help regeneration , prevents unnecessary injury. Not only stretching before exercise is important. Stretching (derived from the English stretch ) means to stretch, to stretch out, to loosen, to increase flexibility, …
Stretching after exercise It will soothe your muscles and help them regenerate. This will reduce the likelihood of muscle cramps, pain, and various tendon and bone injuries.
Again about 10–15 minutes is enough . Ideally, this should be preceded by about 10 minutes of aerobic activity at a leisurely pace for decreased heart rate .
- Slowly Stretch all your muscles . But be careful, it must be a slow and smooth movement, no flailing of your arms and legs.
- You should feel a stretch in the involved muscle. A gentle pull , but don't overdo it. Hold for 15-20 seconds.
- Exercise several times in a row repeat .
- You can also try cooling gels that accelerate regeneration. They need to be massaged in thoroughly.
Massage of tendons and muscles will relieve pain and help with faster regeneration
There are a lot of muscles in our body. They affect our entire life. Without them, we wouldn't walk, move our arms, eat, our organs wouldn't function, ... They are indispensable to our lives .
So it's important that they work properly. Unfortunately, we overwork them every day. Even though it may seem incomprehensible, even people in the office who sit at a computer for 8 hours a day overwork them. Muscles shorten, lose elasticity and performance . Stress also affects them.
It can bring relief Massage . It causes tissue changes, mechanically disrupts restrictions in the skin area, ensures better flushing of the sebaceous and sweat glands. Improves blood flow in the veins, which means easier flushing of waste products from the body.
Kneading the muscles leads to the relief or increase of tension and improvement of the function of muscles and joints . Massage influences the tension of muscles with releasing and relaxation techniques and thus re-establishes the natural balance between the individual muscles.