My 5 Minute Warm Up- Be Prepared to Prevent Injury!
With the Covid-19 lockdown well underway, I suspect many of you are finding that exercise is a good excuse to get out the house and feel some ‘normality’, whilst maintaining social distance of course.
This may mean you are increasing the amount of exercise you are doing, are doing different forms of exercise, and may be doing more self-guided exercise.
However, this change in behaviour and exercising patterns can put us at greater risk to injury as we are introducing new movement patterns and using different muscles that may not be used to the demands we are now placing on them.
One important way to prevent injury is to ensure you are doing a dynamic warm-up.
This allows your body to increase your heart rate and breathing rate slowly, in turn allowing for better lubrication of your joints, allowing more range of motion and better elasticity in tendons and ligaments.
It was once thought that holding static stretches for a length of time was a sufficient warm-up, however this is no longer thought to be the case.
While stretching is very important in elongating certain muscles, a dynamic warm-up that moves your body through several different ranges of motions will be more beneficial in preparing you for whatever activity you’re about to undertake.
Here is my 5 minute warm up to help prevent injury while exercising!
Jogging
Incorporating a slow jog at the start of the warm-up will help to get everything moving and the blood pumping.
I suggest about 1 minute of jogging at 50% pace.
Start off slowly when you are getting back into exercising
High knees
Jog forward slowly but bring your knees up high towards your chest, this will help to open up your muscles on the back of your thighs and your bottom.
Warming up is important to avoid injuries
Butt kicks
Jog forward slowly and bend your knees back to kick your bottom, this will help to open up your thigh muscles.
Open and shut the gate
Walk forward and lift your knee up and bring your knee out the side before stepping back down.
Then swap legs.
This is ‘opening the gate’.
Then ‘shut the gate’ by stepping forward bring your bent knee out to the side, then rotating it inwards back towards the midline before stepping down.
This will help to open up the hips.
This warm up exercise helps to open up your hips
Forward lunges
Step forward and bend your front knee and bring your hips down with a slight bend in the back knee.
Ensure your front knee doesn’t extend beyond your toes.
This stretches the hip flexors, as well as activating the legs, hips and bottom muscles.
Sumos
Standing on the side, have your feet slightly wider than hip width distance apart and your toes turned out.
Drop down into a squat, keeping your back straight.
As you stand up, rotate 180 degrees and drop back down into the squat on the other side.
This will help to open up your hips.
Remember to take it slowly
If you have a specific area or previous injury site that needs warming up or stretching, add these at the end.
Once you’re all nice and warm and your muscles and joints are loosened up, you should be good to do whatever activity you’re planning!
Need More Help?
If you need any further information about injury prevention or setting up your home exercise routine, or are having any specific leg or foot problems, the first thing to do is book an appointment with one of the Podiatrists at Complete Podiatry.
We will work with you to develop a structured management plan that outlines our best advice for how to keep you moving and grooving during this period of isolation.
I'm so confident we can help with your foot and leg problems that I'd love to chat with you personally, it's what I'm passionate about!
Just send us a message or call us & I'll be more than happy to explain how we can help you build an amazing life from the feet up!
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