Sports Realm

In their quest to build muscle fast and just hit the weights, most body builders over look one of the most important aspects of building muscle. Warming up.

In order for your workouts to be effective and to maximize muscle growth, you need to warm up properly before you start “pumping iron”. A good warm up has immense benefits the two most important of which are:

a) It increases the amount of weight your body can handle.

b) It significantly reduces your chances of getting injured when you lift the heavier weights.

I recommend structuring your warm up into 3 short parts. Start with a light cardio routine. Five minutes on the stairmaster, treadmill or cylcle machine should be sufficient. Make sure you do not exert yourself during this phase. You will want to conserve all your energy for the actual workout. Too often I see people doing cardio vigorously, dripping in sweat and then proceeding to workout. When you do this you have little left to give during the weight lifting phase.

Doing light cardio exercise causes synovial to be secreted. Synovial is a fluid which lubricates the joints and reduces friction whenever there is movement. A good amount of this makes your workout ‘frictionless’ if I may use that term!

After you complete cardio, next you will want to stretch thoroughly. Don’t simply go through the motions and breeze through this. Make sure you feel a little tension in the muscle but no pressure on the joints. There are wrong and right ways to stretch and the proper form is illustrated in the link below. Stretching is often overlooked by most body builders but can make a significant difference in how great your workout will be.

The final part of the warm up is doing extremely light weights on the exercises that target the muscle group you intend to work on that day. For example ,if you are working on the upper body (chest, back, shoulders, biceps or triceps) do light push ups or bench pressing with just the weight of the bar. After you complete this you are now ready to begin your workout in earnest.

In summary stretch the whole body and lightly exercise the muscle group of the day using compound exercises with low weights. Also try and keep focus on what you are doing the whole time. Avoid chit chatting and other distractions that lengthen you time in the gym. The mission is to always spend fifteen minutes warming up and an hour on the workout. Any more than that is counter productive.

Since cardio is the least mind intensive part of the workout, use the time spent on cardio to visualize the results you want and the intensity you will bring to bear when lifting the weights. The mental part of bodybuilding is just as important and should not be neglected.

In summary, resist the temptation to rush into the gym and just hit the weights. A proper warm up will pay immense dividends for you in both the short and long term.

Don is a fitness enthusiast and writer. Get the Real Results Men’s Workout Also Learn how to get Men’s Workout Abs