Warming Up
In almost all exercises and sports, warm-up exercises must be done to prevent exercise-related injuries. Exercises involve a lot of pulling and tugging on the muscle, tendon, ligaments and other surrounding tissues. When you move with force and stress, these tissues can prematurely contract and may injure and tear these structures. To avoid this occurrence, you must take time to do simple exercise movements to warm up the muscles. This will include stretching and moving the concerned body part to basic motions. By doing so, your muscles will be heated up to accept and do more rigorous movements expected in the exercise or sport.
Benefits
One of the benefits of warming up is that you lessen the risk of injury to your body. Some examples are muscle cramps and pulled muscles. Another benefit is, you can effectively execute the exercise movements because your muscles have now been primed for it. Lastly, your body can accommodate more training. Thus, this makes you look leaner and feel better since your body can progress to higher intensities and exercise loading.
Physiological Responses
The following are expected responses in the body when you do warm-up exercises. Firstly, your body will have an increased muscle temperature. It would be best that you warm up the same muscles that are used in your main exercise. Secondly, due to the increased muscle temperature, your core body temperature will also rise. Sweating is the body’s primary reaction to dissipate it. Thirdly, you will have an improved range of motion wherein your joints can move more easily and more extensively compared to a joint that was not warmed up.