It’s important to excercise to lose weight, we all know this. Unfortunately, most of us don’t like working out. Throw in the countless other errands, work and family demands and soon it becomes a chore that we hope to get through as fast as possible every day.
So far, so good. We all feel that way at times. (Btw- working out becomes more enjoyable with time.) So in our rush to “get it over with” we are tempted to skip or at least gloss over our warm up routine.
Warning – disaster ahead! Don’t do it. Skipping your warm up routine puts your body at risk for injury – but then you knew that. It’s amazing how easily people can rationalize things away and think…”It won’t happen to me” or even “Just this once won’t hurt.”
Don’t believe it? Evidence of rationalization – even though we know it’s bad for us – is all around. Over thirty years ago the surgeon general put a cancer warning on every pack of cigarettes. Yet there are still tens of millions of smokers out there. Lung cancer is one of if not THE most prevalent cancer. We all know abusing illegal drugs is dangerous, addictive, VERY expensive, illegal and so on…yet illicit drug sales is a multi-billion dollar industry.
The point is, the thought that you can skip the warm-up “just this once” WILL occur to you. Saving some time when you excercise to lose weight is very tempting but – resist. It’s extremely worthwhile to allow just a few extra minutes to warm-up and a couple minutes to cool down afterward.
Here’s a little good news – by properly warming up, the rest of your workout will actually be a little easier and will be more effective! So skipping the warm up routine doesn’t really save you anything. To get the most benefit and avoid injury, make it a practice to warm up every time you excercise to lose weight.
The best part is that your warm up doesn’t have to be a long laborious process. Five minutes will suffice. Plus, there are quite a few moves that will work and by mixing and matching you can avoid falling into a boring rut.
All excercise to lose weight routines – weights or aerobics – need a complete warm up, even if you don’t plan to work on a certain set of muscles that day. For example, if you will be lifting weights to work on your upper body, warm up your legs too! It’s important.
Your warm up doesn’t have to be hard. The main goal is just to get your muscles moving. Stretch them out, get the blood flowing. Jogging in place, skipping rope, jumping Jacks, lunges are all effective options.
Even though many people consider stretching as more of a cooling down strategy, you should include it in your warm up. There are a lot of good reasons. Plus, it can’t hurt to do a few stretches, but it certainly CAN hurt – literally – to skip them.
Why not (if you really object to spending the time) try warming up before you even get to the gym? Stop fighting the crowd for a decent parking space! Park several blocks away and fast walk the rest of the way to the gym. Whenever you have a choice between stairs and elevator, choose stairs. You will be well on your way to being warmed up before you even hit the gym floor.
Funny story…I once saw more than fifteen people waiting for an elevator to go up ONE floor to the gym. At most there were only twenty steps and the stairs were right next to the elevator! Now that I think of it, it really isn’t very funny. Kinda sad actually. After all, they WERE there to get a workout. Heck, when they got off the elevator half of them went straight to the Stairmaster.
Whether trying to maintain levels of good health, do a major weight reduction or just drop a few pounds…a good excercise to lose weight routine will start out easy and constantly build in intensity. This is only risky if you skip the warm up. To remain safe and injury free, give it the few minutes it takes.
