
3 Tips to Improving your Warm Up
Everyone has their own routines. Some walk into the gym, do a couple stretches and then hit the weights. Others hop on their favorite cardio machine and get a 20-30-minute session in before they stretch or go lift weights. There is no right or wrong way to warm up because it all depends on the person and their goals. Well, we just wanted to give you 3 quick tips on how you can shock the body to kick start your next workout at an even higher level than you’re currently at.
Before we go any further, the first thing you should do when you wake up is drink a big glass of water to start your day.
The reason why is because your body is made mostly of water and after multiple hours of sleeping and limited movement, your body shifts into a state of dehydration. In this state of dehydration, your muscles will lose their ability to contract and relax, as well as your body slows down the circulatory processing due to lack of water. Do you ever wake up in the morning and feel stiff? Yeah, that is one reason why, you do not have adequate water in your system to keep your system flowing a neutral frequency.
Alright, now for the good stuff.
Tip #1
Complete your cardio after your workout. Often times this can be the game changer in peoples exercise programs. Each time you walk into the gym the clock starts on energy expenditure. You only have some much energy in the tank to help you through your workout. Placing exercises like resistance training at the beginning of your workout allows you to maximize your muscular strength potential.
When you start with cardio first, your body starts to burn these sources of fuel to allow you to complete the task. 5-15 minutes on a treadmill at a low to medium intensity is fine, however when you start to increase the time on the cardio machine, you deplete your energy source. This increase in energy expenditure before you lift weights reduces your strength potential, making a particular weight harder than it actually would be if you had put your cardio on the back end of your workout. A big reason you want to switch it up is because your body needs to build strength in order to supply you with the adequate mechanical force to complete everything else you want to do such as cardio. The higher density of skeletal muscle you have, the higher caloric expenditure your body will need to maintain a balance within your daily life. Simply, if you get stronger your body will need to burn more calories throughout the day to fuel your body.
Tip 1: Put your cardio after your weight training.
Tip #2
Make your warm up multi-directional. Our body is built to move in lots of various ways. Our joints have the ability to glide, slide, and rotate as we move through our everyday life. The goal of our warm up is to increase our core temperature and get our body prepared for the task at hand. When we limit our warm up to a couple planes of motions, we are not truly warming up the body like it is built for.
For example, walk or running on a treadmill. Treadmill work is great in certain situations; however, it limits our body’s ability to move through all planes of motion.
It reduces the joints ability to move side to side and rotate. Even though we can get a good sweat going, we still do not allow our joints to prepare for side to side or rotation movements that we might pursue in the weight room a few minutes later.
Integrating exercises in the warm up that involve all planes of motions, forward, backwards, side to side, and rotation can help increase warm up potential.
Tip 2: Use multiple planes of motion to warm up.
Tip #3
Start with ground base and progress up to standing exercises. We were born to crawl, roll around, walk, run and just move up and down. As we grow older, we conform to our surroundings and our environment and lose our sense of grounding.
Ground base exercises enrich our sense of grounding and stability. They decrease the gravity around our joints, and allow us to move with less stress placed upon them while still getting high efficient stress. This can lead to a reduction in poor postural control and allow our brain and body to reconnect and sync back up before the workout. Re-connecting with the ground through ground based exercises can help improve the quality of your workout. An integration of ground to standing exercise gives fuller effect of your warm up and the quality at which the joints move over time.



Tip 3: Ground base to Standing.
When it’s all said and done, it’s your workout. Exercising and exercise programing is unique and cultivated based on what you desire and like to do. Now if you are in a rut or just want to change things up, mess around with multi-directional exercises, put your cardio on the back end of your workout, and incorporate exercises that make you get up and off the ground.
The better you move, the better you will feel. At the end of the day just go out there and have some fun.
For more exercises check out our YouTube Channel: Cystic Fibrosis Fitness Institute
More From THE Blog
Improving Lung Function Through Strength Training
The diaphragm is an essential skeletal muscle that is chronically active and is among the most aerobically adapted muscles (Ottenheijm et al., 2008). During inspiration, the diaphragm and external intercostal muscles contract, causing the rib cage to expand, moving...
High Intensity Interval Training: Thinking Beyond Speed
Training in short bouts with limited recovery between exercises has shown to produce positive net gains to improvement in overall exercise capacity. The harder you work and the less recovery you have between sets, creates a formula that will push the limits of the...
Muscle Soreness Doesn’t Predict Future Muscle Strength
Exercise training can cause soreness to the muscles, especially when you partake in strenuous exercise. The feeling of muscle soreness that you get when we roll out of bed, can often bring a sense of accomplishment. The muscles were pushed to their...
Stay Away From Foggy Goals
The journey to finding the best training method or philosophy, without first clearly establishing your goal, has the potential to lead to a lifetime of shortcomings. One of the most important you can ever accomplish is clearly defining a measurable and concise goal....
Breaking the Pattern
Human beings are routine and patterned based species. We like things that are predictable and stable. This is because the more routine-based our lives our, the less cognitive activity it takes to complete a task and we preserve more energy as a result. This natural...
The Importance of Key Receptors in the Control of Breathing During Exercise
The primary function of the respiratory system is to provide gas exchange between the atmosphere and cells within the body. This occurs in four continuous and concurrent processes. The first process is pulmonary respiration (ventilation). Pulmonary...
Building Your Cores Foundation is Essential in Pulmonary Conditions
During the inspiration of air, the thoracic cavity expands and there is a decrease in the intrapleural pressure around the lungs in order to allow the lungs to expand. As the lungs expand, the diaphragm contracts, due to the increased transabdominal pressure and...
Neuromuscular Strength in Pulmonary Conditions
There is no mystical aura that engulfs the gym that gives individuals the gift of brute strength, or gives individual’s cardiovascular capacity like Secretariat, the triple crown record-breaking stallion at Belmont Stakes. There are numerous variables that...
Building the Armor: Sit-Ups May Not Be the Answer
Sit-ups and crunches have been the staple-mark core exercises used to build core strength and endurance. They are easy to implement; you don’t need equipment or a lot of space to perform them. But, are they really the most efficient exercises to target core...
Pulmonary Exercise Testing Should Be Goal Oriented
Performance testing can take on many different looks depending on what you are wanting to measure. For example, if you are looking to improve cardiorespiratory efficiency, VO2max testing is typically used. If you are looking to measure speed, you may use a...
Your Exercise Training Should Fit Your Goal
There are many approaches to exercise.; a buffet of options to pick from these days. You have the option of focusing on mobility and range of motion by participating in yoga classes. You can test your exercise capacity by joining a cycling class or by...
High-Intensity Interval Training: Is It Really Worth It?
It was about a year ago when I watched an exercise video a colleague had sent me. The fitness enthusiast filmed a HIIT training workout for their followers. The workout consisted of various lower body weight plyometric based exercises. It had only been a...
The Importance of Cardiopulmonary Testing in Pulmonary Diseases
The primary aim of exercising is to improve quality of life, strength, endurance, and/or movement capabilities. Integrating a resistance and cardiovascular training program into a client’s lifestyle can improve posture, respiration, musculoskeletal strength...
Tips to Build Home Exercise Equipment and Workouts
There has been a flood of exercise content these last few weeks. It is great to see trainers, coaches, and experts in the field of science giving back to the community. There are many ways to exercise and we have seen many different approaches to training. We believe...
Motivating Youth to Workout at Home
Let’s be honest. Motivating youth to do workouts after school or on the weekends can be hard enough, and now not only are doing their workouts at home, but they are also taking their classes online at home! With so much times at home, how do you keep your...
Protect Your Vocal Folds: The Little Muscles That Give you a Voice!
As a Speech Language Pathologist, I have been curious about the impact’s cystic fibrosis, COPD, and other respiratory illnesses have on vocal quality. Having been around the CF community for a couple of years, I know that CF can impact numerous organ systems that...
Cystic Fibrosis at the Playground
Your child has a right to be a kid! Of course, having a child with cystic fibrosis brings on more challenges and worries. It requires being more alert to surroundings, your child, and others. But, your child still deserves to play and you still deserve to watch your...
Complementary Approaches to Clearing Mucus
The clearance of mucus is very important for individuals fighting pulmonary conditions. In cystic fibrosis (CF) and COPD the clearance of mucus is crucial to clearing bacteria pathogens to reduce the decline in lung function. To understand how we can attack the...
Motivating Children/Teens to Exercise
Intrinsic motivation is something that develops over time. Kids don’t yet have the cognitive abilities to grasp the concept that, “exercising is good for physical and mental health.” The understanding that by “doing something good for your body now, your future self...
Reduce Your Stress By Scheduling Your Workouts Through A Bigger Lens
One of the ways people measure their success in the gym each week is by counting how many times they showed up to the gym. For example, 5 days in the gym equals 5 workouts. That is assuming you are only working out once a day. When planning out our weekly schedule,...
Are You Apart of the Morning Crew or Night Crew?
Exercising is important for everyone. Exercising has many benefits from improving cardiovascular health, decreasing stress, to even improving lung function in cystic fibrosis and COPD. However, what is good for us doesn’t mean we will always want to partake in...
Optimizing Recovery for CF and COPD
The body is a remarkable system that takes time to recover. When you have chronic illness, such as CF or COPD, the recovery time the body needs will be a little different than for a healthier individual. This is due to decreased oxygen consumption and...
3-Tips to Programming Strength Training
Strength training can be a powerful tool to daily living. Strength training helps improve respiratory function, muscular strength and endurance and it supports your ability to live with using less effort. The musculoskeletal system moves the body’s joints so that you...