subject: Bodybuilding For Beginners: The Importance Of Warm-up And Cool-down Sets [print this page] Beginners have so much to learn, that it almost becomes overwhelming. It often takes well over a year for a beginner to even assimilate the basics of workouts and workout principles.
One element not often discussed is the importance of warm-up and cool-down. Warming up the muscles and joints surrounding a particular body part is the essence and foundation of good injury prevention. That's just not something that beginners tend to think about, because they have no concept of how workouts can help, and sometimes hinder, when steps are skipped to prepare the muscle for resistance, weight and intensity.
Warming up muscles, joints, tendons and sockets is just a matter of taking 5-10 minutes of time preceding a workout. That small amount of time you take prior to actually digging in and working muscles hard, can mean the difference between an injury-free beginning and a multitude of ongoing problems down the road.
Exuberance can be a great thing - the one thing that many seasoned hardcore guys don't have in their arsenal of weapons to win the war on size. But exuberance, unmeasured, means that injury is a real threat. Injuries can be mild to severe to gym-ending, and can't be taken lightly. That's why warming up muscles in the beginning of a workout is key to success.
WARM UP
There are several ways one can warm up muscles. Warm ups can be done in a general sense, using cardiovascular equipment, and in a specific sense, by way of light dumbbell or machine work on a given body part that is about to be put to the test with heavy work.
For instance, an overall walk on an incline on the treadmill, followed by a few stretches, might be a great way to generally warm up. The cardiovascular work you do actually warms up the entire body, not just the legs, and gets blood flowing by way of dilating capillaries for an overall flush.
But including stretches afterward, which are designed to specifically work a particular body part, such as the shoulders, can be the difference between being merely physically warm, and being actually ready to perform using greater weight and intensity, and is preferable.
So let's look at the shoulders as an example. This is a body part that is oft-injured by the inexperienced and experienced alike. It is a complex joint that is susceptible to torque - both correct and incorrect - and is quite vulnerable given the various angles that workouts may include. Too much behind the neck press and the super spinatus will tear. Too much rotation under stress, and the rotator cuff is likely to tear. So warming up the shoulder joint seems absolutely crucial.
Learning how to alleviate undue stress on the shoulder joint can certainly help prevent injury, and should be a part of anyone's arsenal of safety prior to endeavoring advanced workouts. However, warming up is a great way to ensure, almost always, that there isn't an injury from stress within the joint due to ligaments and tendons being tight and untested. After all, applying rotation, and lateral movement, within one shoulder exercise, can create problems for the shoulders. This should dictate how to warm up.
Warm ups for shoulders should include: A lateral movement with a light dumbbell, an overhead push with a light dumbbell, a front raise with a light low cable apparatus or a light dumbbell, and slow shoulder circles in both directions.
This may seem like a lot, but it accomplishes more than just injury-prevention. It warms the joint, stretches the tendons and ligaments, works all angles of a complex joint, and actually enables the muscles, tendons and ligaments to perform within a greater range of motion (enabling greater potential growth) than they would be able to move in if they were not engaged prior to a range. Workouts become less arduous and pumps become more possible.
Injury prevention is such a nebulous concept for most people - that is until they are injured. So warm ups something many just skip because of the "why fix it if it ain't broke" theory. But when it breaks, people lament the fact that a simple warm up routine could have prevented mishap and a lot of rehab.
But cool downs are equally important for different reasons....
COOL DOWN
Cool downs are something people skip far more often than warm ups. Injury prevention may be tacked on to the front side of a workout, via warm up, but cool down seems like an unnecessary time-consuming step. We assure you, it isn't.
As soon as you finish a workout, muscles stop working and cool down on their own. Why do something called "cool down" when it's happening all on its own, right? Wrong! It's precisely because muscles cool down so rapidly, and we get on with our day, that cool down should be a part of the scheme of things. In fact, when muscles cool down on their own, it happens so rapidly, that stiffness can set in. When stiffness sets in, susceptibility to muscle tears is great.
What's more, since workouts push lactic acid into muscles, it's crucial to work it out so that soreness can be minimized. Light sets, similar to warm ups, can ease lactic acid out of muscles, diminish soreness, improve chance for recovery, and make you feel better. Cool down should also include drinking plenty of water to cool the inner core and replace what was lost in workouts - cardiovascular or resistance training.
Stretching after workouts is also better than stretching prior. Remember, you're starting to stretch after you're warm, so your muscles naturally stretch better and have less chance of being injured than going into a full stretch cold. Stretching can improve recovery and help facilitate growth by lengthening them and increasing the overall range you have to work within.
Next time you think of skipping either of these two important steps, think again! Warm ups and cool downs both have their place and the difference they make is something you'll notice quickly.
