The warm-up is an integral part of every workout. It ensures that your body is prepared for physical exertion and that your muscles are properly stretched. A good warm-up guarantees that you won’t pull a muscle during your workout – as long as your workout is well thought out. Be sure to check out how to perform the perfect warm-up.
Your warm-up should combine some aerobic exercise and stretching. This will increase your starting heart rate, but also prepare your muscles for sudden contraction and relaxation.
Dynamic stretching exercises
During dynamic stretching, your muscles not only get stretched a lot, but they also toughen up for the effort ahead of them. It should involve many parts of our body and cannot be omitted during the warm-up.
Back and leg muscle stretching
Dynamic bends will stretch the muscles of your legs and back at the same time. Perform dynamic bends, taking care not to strain your lumbar region. First, bend forward so that your head hangs between your legs and your hands try to touch the ground. Then, smoothly move to your left leg, and then to your right leg. During the incline, try to dynamically deepen it. Perform the stretch in a reasonable manner – your back should be slightly rounded. You should not feel any pain during the stretch, only the feeling of stretching along the entire length of your spine.
Hand Stretching
Interlace your hands and straighten your arms at the elbows. Then, lift your hands to the height of your chest and try to stretch them as much as possible. During this stretch, you will feel a pulling of the muscles from your shoulders to your forearms. Rhythmically try to pull your hands and return to less tense muscles.
Another way to stretch your arms is to draw your straight arm to your chest. Position it so that it is diagonally across your torso. Then hold it against your chest with your other hand and dynamically pull it tighter to your chest. Stretch the muscles of your other hand in the same way.
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Aerobic exercises
You should also do aerobic exercises during the warm-up. One of them is jumping once on one leg and then on the other. Jump up while bringing the leg bent at the knee to your chest. Land on one leg and dynamically change it to the other, lifting the first leg to the chest.
A very good part of the warm-up are also jumping jacks. When doing jumping jacks, remember that the jumps should not be high – what matters is the dynamics of the movement and spreading the arms and legs wide, so that all the muscles of the limbs are worked.
Don’t forget to warm up your hips – using them, perform so called figure eights, as well as transfer your body weight from one leg to another, at the same time pushing your hip out to the side. This element of the warm-up will allow you to prepare your body for sit-ups or squats.
To warm up the muscles of the legs, it is very helpful to quickly jog, as well as rises on tiptoe. While performing them, it is good to hold the silhouette up a little bit so that the calf muscles work harder and get used to working harder during the workout. Many people also use extra weight in the form of dumbbells to make the warm-up more effective.
When warming up, it is also a good idea to use available machines such as a stationary bike or a treadmill. However, an orbiter will have the most comprehensive effect, making you work both your leg and arm muscles. You can put extra weight on it, so you’ll already burn calories while doing your warm-up.
Some people also use a spinning wheel to massage their muscles before a workout, but it’s a much better idea to get them moving. Leave the massage for after your workout.
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Workouts are a great way to strengthen your body and maintain proper muscle tone. However, there are times when after a workout, especially an intense one, you feel discomfort, sometimes severe enough that you can’t lift yourself out of bed or climb the stairs. What to do then? How can you help yourself? Learn proven ways to treat post-workout muscle soreness!
Food
Relieve the symptoms of DOMS, or delayed post-workout muscle soreness, with foods rich in antioxidants, first of all watermelon, which contains citrulline. This non-protein amino acid helps reduce soreness and accelerate muscle recovery. Pineapples, ginger rhizome and cherry juice also have strong anti-inflammatory properties.
Curcumin and trance
The curcumin contained in the perennial herb has analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects. It also has strong antioxidant properties. Curcumin promotes faster muscle recovery after strenuous exercise. Analogous effects are shown by Omega-3 fats and cod liver oil.
Milk proteins
In 2017, a study was conducted that proved that milk-based protein nutrients remove pain caused by micro-damage to muscles and connective tissue, including from overly intense training. Protein nutrients in concentrate or isolate form contain 40 to as much as 90% milk proteins. Milk proteins consumed in the form of nutrients not only reduce DOMS symptoms, but also prevent them.
Warm baths and Epsom salt
You can also prevent the feeling of discomfort by providing warmth to your muscles immediately after your workout. You can apply a towel wetted in warm water to your body, use a thermos, or even better: indulge in a warming bath. If you opt for a bathtub, add a little Epsom salt to your bath, which relieves inflammation and pain caused by too much training. Such a bath will not only relieve pain, but also affect your mood.
Impact of cold
It turns out that cold compresses are equally helpful in removing post-workout muscle soreness. Cold compresses eliminate swelling and calm the nervous system. Use bags of ice or frozen products. However, avoid direct contact of ice with the skin. If your body is up to it, soak in a tub of cold water.
Massages
Self-massage is also good for soreness, reducing muscle pain and improving flexibility. All you need to do is put a roller under the sore area and perform longitudinal rolling. Or you can always use the services of a massage therapist to loosen up sore areas and get them working again. You will achieve the greatest effectiveness if you undergo a massage no later than two days after training.
Repeat workouts
Muscle soreness should not be a reason not to continue exercising. DOMS is a normal bodily response to stress that your body needs to adapt to. If you don’t abandon exercise and keep up the intensity, you can be sure that once the pains subside, they won’t return. However, if they are so severe that you can’t exercise as before, slow down a bit, reduce the load, or for 2-3 days do exercises aimed at developing other muscle parts.
Cooldown
After a workout, the body needs relaxation and relaxation exercises to even out breathing and calm the heart rate. Calm exercise after a workout will give your muscles an uninterrupted blood supply to remove lactic acid and prevent sourness. Instead of exercising, you can go for a walk or jog on a treadmill for 10 minutes at a brisk pace.