Thursday, December 13, 2007

Warm Up your Muscles

As the weather gets colder outside warming up becomes essential to get the most out of your workout. An easy way to warm up your muscles is to start out slowly for the first 5 to 10 minutes of your walk or run. After warming up, if possible try a few light stretches of the calf and quadriceps muscles. Do not spend too much time stretching otherwise you may actually cool off.

Warming up may also help you the next day by not being as sore after a workout which will allow you to workout even better that day as your muscles will not be as sore.

Norman Swan in his article Health Minutes wrote the following “A group at the University of Sydney did a randomised trial testing warming up and cooling down. Cooling down made no difference at all but warming up for about ten minutes reduced delayed muscle soreness a little. Whether it was worth the effort depends on how much it bothers you, especially given that it’s hard to predict whether you’ll have a problem at all” You can read more about this article at Health Minutes

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