The physical benefits of warming up include:
Increased flexibility which allows for an increased range of motion during the workout
help to relax your muscles which can reduce the risk of injury during the workout
Improve blood flow (oxygen) around the body which prepares your muscles for more intense work
Improving the muscle's temperature/warming up has been linked with increased overall performance (click here)
Preventing injury
This one was a hard one to find actual evidence for. On one hand, the internet agrees that warm-ups are beneficial but that meant, the majority of articles on the internet were very happy to make claims but none of them offered to back their claims up with any evidence. However, after lots of research, I stumbled across a scientific article with some actual data and statistics. “When warm-up is combined with stretching, the elasticity of muscle is temporarily increased requiring a greater force and degree of lengthening to tear a muscle.”
This suggests that it is important to engage in stretching before the warm-up commences as well as after the warm-up and before the main workout commences. As this helps to prevent injury as you are increasing your range of motion and flexibility which decreases your chances of having a bad technique.
This stretching in combination with the warm-up to help improve blood circulation decreases your chance of injury.
Increasing blood circulation
Furthermore, the process of warming up helps to increase blood circulation. This has three major benefits:
It helps to prepare the heart for strenuous exercise and to prepare it for increased blood circulation around the body. Preparing the heart has countless benefits however, one of the main benefits is that slowly going into exercise and slowly increasing your heart rate can prevent putting excess strain on the heart. This can be lifesaving, especially for people with heart issues as they are able to slowly prepare their heart for exercise instead of jumping in straight away.
Increasing your heart rate helps to slowly increase the blood flow around the body, this helps in providing the necessary nutrients to the muscles within the body as well as supplying these muscles with oxygen which will be used up when completing physical activity.
Furthermore, increasing the blood flow and circulation in your body helps in increasing your body temperature. Increasing your body temperature has many benefits with one of the main benefits being that your muscles will have an increased range of motion. This is crucial when completing exercise as an increased range of motion assists in correctly performing exercises instead of changing your technique due to decreased range of motion which can then put unnecessary strain on your body.
Different kinds of warm-ups
static stretching: this is the simple stretch that stretches a particular muscle or a range of muscles whilst standing still in one place
dynamic stretching: this involves stretching whilst also moving for example you may do butt-kicking and running forwards.
Cardio warm-ups: this involves doing some kind of cardio in order to increase your heart rate as well as raise the body temperature.
The best kind of warm-up involves all three of these as they slowly get your body ready to complete exercise.