To stay safe and get the most out of your workout you must always include a pre-workout warm-up before you begin and then finish with a cool down to get your body back into gear.
If you’re short on time, you may feel tempted to skip a warmup and jump right into your workout. But doing so can increase your risk of injury, and put more strain on your muscles.
When preparing for any kind of exercise, whether it’s a cardio workout, strength training, or a team sport, it’s important to take a few minutes to ease your muscles into exercise mode. Doing so can help you reap many fitness rewards.
During a workout we can all go from zero to hero and push hard but the safe way to train is to bring the body’s temperature up slowly and loosen up the muscles before we get to do anything serious. That’s what warm-ups are designed to do. Stretching, on the other hand, is done in order to improve overall flexibility. Once muscles have worked they are at their most compliant state and they let us stretch further than we normally would gaining more ground while we are at it.
Warmups are critical to a better performance and fewer injuries but stretching is somewhat of an optional extra, but it is highly recommended.
If stretching exercises are part of your workout routine, it's best to do them after the warm-up or cool-down phase, when your muscles are already warm. Done correctly, warming up and cooling down may offer help in reducing your risk of injury and improving your athletic performance.
Warmups and cool-downs generally involve doing your activity at a slower pace and reduced intensity.
Warming up helps prepare your body for aerobic activity. A warmup gradually revs up your cardiovascular system by raising your body temperature and increasing blood flow to your muscles. Warming up may also help reduce muscle soreness and lessen your risk of injury.
Cooling down after your workout allows for a gradual recovery of preexercise heart rate and blood pressure. Cooling down may be most important for competitive endurance athletes, such as marathoners, because it helps regulate blood flow. Cooling down doesn't appear to help reduce muscle stiffness and soreness after exercise, but more research is needed.
Warm-ups should always be dynamic, always use active exercises to get our bodies ready. We need to get the blood flowing, especially during colder seasons. Our bodies benefit from stretches after we have already worked out (cool down). Our muscles are more susceptible to them allowing us to stretch further and hold the stretches longer.
