The best warm-up exercises

One of the most essential things for a good workout is to perform a good warm-up. With a warm-up exercise, you prepare your muscles for a period of intensive movement. It helps your body perform better and it can prevent many injuries. Although every sport is different, many warm-up exercises are the same to properly warm up your muscles. What is a warm-up, what is the use of a warm-up and what types of warm-up exercises are there? You can read it all in this blog!

What is a warm-up?

With a warm-up you prepare your body and muscles for physical activity. Warming up literally means 'warming up', the idea is to gradually warm up your muscles while also increasing your heart rate. So you are not supposed to exhaust yourself completely during a warm-up. This is not good for your muscles and you will be tired before you start your actual activity. As mentioned above, every sporting activity has its own warm-up. For example, in football you obviously use your legs the most. The warm-up exercise is aimed at warming up your leg muscles. In fitness you often train your entire body. The warm-up has also been adapted to this. The opposite of a warm up is a cool down. These are exercises that you perform just after physical exertion to allow the body to relax again. Here you let your body get used to the normal rhythm again by, for example, doing stretching exercises or walking at a leisurely pace.

What are the benefits of a warm-up?

There are many reasons to warm up before exercising. Not only are your muscles and heart rate prepared for movement, your brain is also brought out of rest mode. This improves your focus during efforts and allows you to perform better. By preparing your brain for the upcoming intensive movements, you let your brain get used to the exercise. So it improves your coordination.

Getting moving at a gradual pace also speeds up blood circulation. This ensures that muscles are supplied with blood more quickly, which in turn helps prevent injuries. It helps to apply good breathing techniques during the warm-up. This way your body receives more oxygen, which has a positive influence on your blood circulation.

The best warm-up exercises?

As mentioned above, every sport has its own warm-up. That is why we will describe the best general warm-up exercises that you can use for any physical sporting activity. This warms up your muscles and prepares your brain and body for intensive exercise.

Warm-up before

• Warm-up for endurance sports:
  In endurance sports, such as many ball sports, it is important to prepare your body for prolonged and intensive movements. The warm-up for endurance sports is not only intended to prepare your body for the upcoming efforts, it also helps against cramps after physical exertion. Start with an easy jog at a consistent pace. This way you don't get out of breath and you don't waste energy. Then continue your warm-up with exercises for your legs and/or arms, depending on the sport you are going to perform.

• Warm-up before strength training:
  Whether you often find yourself at the gym or are new to the world of fitness: before you start your strength training, an active warm-up is very important. You want to increase the heart rate to warm up the muscles through blood flow. With strength training you usually use your entire body, so during a warm-up for strength training you are supposed to warm up your entire body. The ideal device to do this is the cross trainer. You warm up both your entire leg and arm muscles and after a period of 10 to 15 minutes your muscles are ready for strength training.

Stretching.

Do you need to stretch after warming up? The answer to this question varies per sporting activity. When you warm up your muscles for strength training, it is not recommended to stretch after warming up. This can reduce strength performance. Stretching is recommended for endurance sports to properly loosen all muscles. This helps prevent injuries.

Warm up muscles with ointment.

To help your muscles warm up during the warm-up, you can use a special ointment or gel. Muscle gel has been developed to warm up your muscles and promote blood circulation. Muscle gel is also recommended if you have aches or injuries, as it soothes the complaints of muscle and joint disorders. RÉVVI offers muscle gels that can be applied before, during and after exercise. More information about our muscle gels can be found on this page. Would you like to know more about warming up your muscles? Be sure to read our blog about heat therapy .