The term warm-up refers to the part of physical exercise that we do in the first few minutes before the actual physical work begins. Let's see why it is so important and what guidelines should be followed to ensure that we have warmed up properly.

The main purpose of low-to-medium intensity activity during warm-ups is to reduce the risk of injury both during training itself and in the long term, as well as to prepare our bodies to perform at their best throughout our workout. To achieve these benefits, it is useful to increase our body temperature by about two degrees, bringing it to a working range of between 37 and 39 degrees.

Now, however, let's try to understand how to structure a good warm-up and what situations to avoid. To create a good warm-up routine, we can follow the R.A.M.P system, which uses an acronym to remind us of the important phases:

R stands for Raise the heart rate, and it is advisable to do this through low-intensity exercises that work on both our physical and cognitive abilities. It has the following direct effects on our body: it increases our temperature, as mentioned above, improves our gas exchange capacity during breathing, and increases the viscosity of our joints.

A as in Activate Appropriate Muscles, i.e., the recommendation to perform exercises similar to and identical to those that will be the focus of our training, taking care, however, not to overexert the target muscles. To achieve this, we can use breathing exercises, work on our proprioception, and use small elastic bands in the first exercises to provide auxtonic resistance to our body.

M stands for Mobilise appropriate joints, i.e., mobilizing the joints involved in our workout, improving and increasing their range of motion. As you can well understand, this part of the warm-up goes hand in hand with the previous one and can be achieved by introducing some dynamic stretching exercises and movement patterns borrowed from the animal world into our warm-up.

P stands for Potentiate nervous system, which ultimately means working on what will be most useful during our workout, namely the responsiveness of our nervous system. To stimulate it properly, we can use plyometric exercises or micro sprints.

Now that we have seen what to do, let's quickly look at the situations that should be avoided at all costs:

- Not dedicating the necessary time to our bodies...usually a good warm-up can be completed in 8-12 minutes.

- Performing a warm-up that is too general without really focusing on the movements that we will be performing during our workout.

- Choosing the wrong stimulus and load, risking excessive fatigue or remaining below the activation threshold.

Now that we know more about this topic, all we have to do is get ready for our next workout...if you want to find out more, we invite you to listen to the dedicated episode on our podcast and watch the video!

Listen to "How to perform a good R.A.M.P. warm-up!" on Spreaker.

Have a good workout, everyone!

Music Driftmaster by Shane Ivers - www.silvermansound.com