Is a warm up important?

Warming up before you exercise can help you both physically and mentally.

It can help, first and foremost, to prevent injury, but there are other benefits too.

Gently introducing your body to exercise increases your heart rate and blood flow which enables more oxygen to reach your muscles. A warm up activates and primes the connections between your nerves and muscles, which improves the efficiency of movement (when you’re putting in the effort to exercise you want to make it as efficient as possible right?)

Warming up means:

• Your muscles are warm and relaxed, which reduces the risk of injury

• Your brain engages with your body more

• You gradually increase your effort which can help with motivation

• You experience a greater range of movement

• You’re psychologically prepared

Don’t think a warm up has to be time consuming either, some light aerobic exercise will be enough to help you prepare, although trying to do something that gets all your muscles working is advantageous.

Movements such as walking, jogging or high knees followed by some stretching, which set you up nicely.