Before starting any exercise to lose weight you need to warm the body up thoroughly. There are three reasons for this:

1. To reduce the chance of the injury

2. To increase blood flow to the working muscles and boost activity of neuromuscular pathways allowing them to be fully prepared for exercise.

3. To enable your joints to move more freely and prepare them for any stressful impacts.

A good warm up can help limit any discomfort or anxiety associated with long exercise sessions. It also enables the energy system to be “revved up” and “activated” to keep up with the pace of energy requirements.

Warm up with 10 minutes aerobic work. It’s usually best to start a warm-up session by performing the same exercise as the intended aerobic or cardio workout. For example, if you intend to jog for 20 minutes then walk for 3 minutes, walk briskly for a further 3 minutes, then do a few minutes very light jogging.

During this initial warm up, breathing should be easy at first, and then gradually build up the intensity over the duration. Although keep in mind that this is a warm up so you shouldn’t be breathing hard after the 10 minutes. At the end of the first 10 minutes you should be breathing deeper but still fairly easy, with a feeling that your body temperature has risen slightly.

Now it’s time to do some basic stretches for each major muscle group. I have given links to pages which show some general stretching routines that I have used in the past. These are just to give you some idea of how to warm up depending on the activity intended. I would recommend you always warm up under the guidance of a qualified instructor at the gym. He can guide you in using proper body alignment and posture to limit any chance of injury!

Stretches should be done statically and not by bouncing to the end of the stretch (a ballistic stretch). A static stretch is where you extend the limb to a comfortable point and hold the position for 20 – 30 seconds. You should only stretch to a point where you can feel the muscle intended. You should never try to force a stretch or continue any stretch that begins to cause some pain.

With 10 minutes of initial aerobic work, another 5-10 minutes of stretching and 10 minutes cooling down after a workout, it means there will be an 20-30 minutes added to any workout. If you don’t have the time you can cut the warm up and cool down phases by half. Although bear in mind that the better you are warmed up the more you’ll get from the workout. Also remember that injury prevention is better than injury recovery!

A thorough warm up can put your mind and body in the right zone for you to have an effective workout!