A comprehensive workout consists of 4 components:
- Warm-up
- Strength training
- Cardiovascular exercise (as we talked about it 2 weeks ago, strength and cardio can also be combined if necessary)
- Recovery
Where most people cut corners due to time restraints and poor planning is warm-up and recovery. So today we will reiterate the importance of these 2 components – warm up and recovery – and give examples how you can maximize your time with simple and effective stretching exercise.
What are typical mistakes that people do when it comes to warm up and recovery?
Most people don’t warm up. They warm up with just lighter weights.
Most people also don’t utilize the whole body during the warm up.
Most people don’t do any kind of recovery. They jump right into the shower or jump in the car to go home and they stiffen up.
What is the impact?
Stiffness
Muscle soreness that lingers longer than 2 days
You are on a quick road for an injury to occur
So what is your professional advice?
Stay simple not complicated in your warm-up exercises. Reason is, when you are on a bike or treadmill, you just warm up the legs, not the whole body.
What we do at Get Fit, we warm up the entire body beforehand and we do stretching exercises at the end. Each component doesn’t take more than 2-3 minutes but the impact is enormous.