Once you are all set to run, you feel the temptation to jump out of your front door and start running at the fastest speed you can attain, and completely ignore the warmup exercises in order to save your time. Beginners commit these mistakes of avoiding stretching before running and cooling down after it without knowing the disastrous effect of these mistakes.
In this article, we’ll be discussing the negative impact of avoiding warming up before involving in intensive workouts. Running at high speed immediately after stepping out of your bed can be really harmful to your muscles. It does nothing better but gives an open invitation to injuries.
When you start running fast without stretching, you run the risk of damaging the muscle, tendon, joint, or even a bone. This happens because, in the state of excitement, you attain a speed that your muscles just can not sustain. As a result of this, you get tired and burnt out even before your excitement of running fast ends.
The worst part of you slowing down even before your workout ends is that you feel discouraged, exhausted, and dreadful for your next workout. This creates a setback in your mind that you just aren’t capable of achieving your goal. In fact, you are ignoring the one thing that is stopping you from achieving your target and creating another milestone.
This is how warming up helps
A decent warmup run and a bit of stretching give your tightened muscles, stiff joints, and bones a chance to loosen up. Just like your get ready mentally to start a run, warmup exercises send signals to your brain to activate muscles so that they can get ready for the workout.
When your muscles get ready, it eventually increases the rate of your heartbeats, which allows the pumping of even more blood to your muscles, supplying them with enough fluid and energy. All of this initiates a rhythm inside your body that makes it capable to sustain the workout and finish it with enough energy to go even farther.
According to the studies, the researchers have found that when runners performed a dynamic stretching and warm-up before going for the actual run, they were able to perform better and even sustain for a longer period of time during their workout than those who didn’t do warmup exercises.
Warmup Exercises you should add to your workout
Here, we are going to tell you some short span exercises that you should involve before going for your actual run. These will genuinely help you reach another level during your workout without burning out much.
Walking – Normal walk for about five minutes will ease out your muscles and shift them from relaxing mode to workout mode. It is advised to walk in a decent range of motion similar to your running stance so that it stretches your muscles, tendons, and joints. Also, it raises the temperature within your body, strengthens your core, and plays a vital role in the enhancement of the blood flow in your veins.
Stretching – People are often confused between static and dynamic stretching. Static stretching is basically holding a muscle in a fixed and elongated position for some time. Researchers suggest that static stretching does more harm than good, as it increases the risk of injuries in the muscles and tendons. On the other hand, dynamic stretching involves controlled leg movements, loosening up muscles, and increasing heart rate along with the increase in the blood flow.
Dynamic Stretches involves Squats with walkout, jumping, and forward jacks, and walking out with knees and elbows.
Strides – These are often termed pick-ups and involve 4-5 100-meter runs. They help your muscles flood with blood and shift your muscles from walking to running mode. However, there is a proven way to do good strides and some techniques you should follow for enhanced results.
- Jog for a minute or two
- Accelerate gradually after 50-60 meters and then gradually lower your speed
- Shake your legs after every stride
- Perform strides according to you as there is no critical target to be achieved in this
Butt Kicks – As the name suggests, butt kicks are nothing but to touch your butts with your heel while jogging. Do 5-10 repetitions of these as it will stretch your quads.
Weave Steps – If you are a beginner, then probably you won’t be familiar with the term grapevine in warmup exercises. Grapevine movement is nothing but stepping your right foot to the right and then placing your left foot in front of your right foot. Doing this movement in repetition and then reversing the pattern to the left will prove to be a great help in your stepping while running. Increase the intensity of the movement accordingly, but try to move your steps as fast as you can.
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