I know the feeling. When starting an exercise, you just go ahead with it without doing the "warm up" you always hear you have to do. Warming up can be a hassle at times especially on days when you feel that you are all ready to start your workout.

Yes the common understanding of warming up is to reduce injury. However, you seem to be able to avoid injury even though you did not warm up. All you do is to start slow and just swing your arms and legs a little to loosen up before starting up your workout. So what is the point then? Why do you warm up before exercise? Why do so many fitness experts emphasize on warming up properly?

Warming up is where the muscles in your body are forced to contract, before allowing to relax. This improves elasticity of your muscles, to avoid and injuries which are caused by stiffness. Research has also shown that warming up not only reduces injury, but also increases your workout performance. This means that by doing a proper warm up, usually about 7-10 minutes, you will be able to enhance your strength, balance, coordination and flexibility.

How does this happen?

By warming up, you are actually allowing the increase of blood flow in your body, to carry more oxygen around you. If you took biology in high school, you probably would know that oxygen is what keeps you going in your body. Thus, The increase in blood flow would allow for the increase in your ability to perform your workout well.

Besides this, other benefits of warming up would also include:

- allowing you to be mentally prepared for the activity

- lowers stress on heart

- improves range of motion.

With that said, you have to take note that the idea of just stretching your muscles such as doing a calf stretch or a hamstring stretch DOES NOT warm up your muscles. In fact, doing such activities may become detrimental to your performance. This is due to such stretches having the potential to over extend your muscles. What i would recommend would be doing dynamic warm ups.

Warming up is not only a means for injury prevention, but a means for improving your performance as well. By warming up your body properly, you will be able to prime your body for the proper conditions you need for the workout. Other benefits would also include lowering stress on your heart and preparing you mentally for the activity, all aimed at maximization your workout potential. Thus allowing you to perform at your best. In order to warm up your body properly, the proper routine has to be chosen. This would refer to doing dynamic warm ups.