Why Is Warming Up Important?

Warming up gets your blood pumping faster, ensuring your muscles get a steady supply of oxygen during your workouts and raising your body temperature. Your muscles will become more flexible and efficient, reducing both your reaction time and risk of injury.

An often overlooked benefit of warming up is that it helps you get into the right mindset for exercise. This can help you focus better during your workout, being mindful of sensations and paying attention to your body movements.

The Warm Up Checklist

Remember these tips when crafting your next warm-up routine:

• Focus on big muscle groups: Engaging large muscle groups while keeping your movements big and easy.
• Low intensity: A good warm-up should start in a relatively low intensity and increase gradually. This is important if you want to prevent muscle cramps.
• Adapt to your workout: Adapt the warm-up to your workout. For example, if you're performing a lower body routine, make sure your glutes, calves and quads are targeted in your warm up. You can do this by including exercises you plan to do during your workout, but be sure to keep a smaller range of motion and build up during your warm up.
• Take your time: A usual warm-up should be about 7-10 minutes, although doing a few jumping jacks can be sufficient to warm your muscles before working out too. It will always depend on how strenuous the workout will be following your warm-up, the more difficult and longer the exercise session, the longer the warm-up should be.

All-in-One Warm-Up

If you're not sure where to begin (or you're starting a full body workout), be sure to warm up all the major muscle groups before starting. A good warm up exercise prepares the body with large dynamic movements; one classic and effective warm-up exercise is jumping jacks.

Should I Stretch Before Working Out?

It's a common misconception that you should stretch to warm up, but actually the opposite is true! Stretching on cold muscles can lead to injury, and doesn't provide great results for your flexibility. If you're planning on stretching, do this after your workout.

Did you know that Seven includes a dynamic warm-up exercise at the beginning of most workouts? Plus, if you're taking on a challenging workout (or just want a longer warm up), you can always find a dedicated 'Warm Up' workout in Seven's Library.
 

Read next: why mobility workouts should be an essential part of your fitness routine.