Exercises and Workouts - The Three Commandments Of A Good Warm Up

Warming up for exercise is often overlooked by many people because they are so focused on what exercise program they are going to do in the gym. While your primary workout exercise selection is, of course, important for ensuring you stay on track, don't overlook the benefits a proper warm-up brings.

By doing a thorough warm up, you help mentally prepare your body for exercise and get your muscles loose and ready to contract with full force. Those people who perform proper warm-ups are far less likely to suffer from injury and are far more liable to see fast results.

If this isn't reason enough, I'm not sure what is. But, how do you warm-up correctly? To warm up your muscles properly, there are three things you need to focus on. Let's take a closer look at what those are...

1. Easy-Going Cardio. To begin your warm up, you'll want to be focusing on some easy-going cardio exercise. Easy-going cardio exercise could include...

some light jogging,
some cycling, or
just marching on the spot if you're doing a home workout session.
The point of this is to enhance blood circulation throughout your body while also getting your heart rate up and your body ready for exercise. The point of this cardio is not to induce fatigue, however. If you start to feel tired during your warm up, you know you are pushing too hard. It should only energize you, making you ready for what's to come.

2. Range Of Motion Movements. The next component of a proper warm up is a range of motion exercises. Your exercise motion range could be arm and leg swings along with side bends. Note it is not supposed to be stretching. Save your stretching for later on in the session after your main lifts are completed. You just want to get your joints and ligaments loosened up and less tight so you can perform each exercise through the full range of motion.

3. Foam Rolling. Finally, consider bringing foam rolling into the warm up picture. While foam rolling is often carried out as a recovery exercise, it can also be used to help prepare you for the session ahead.

Some light foam rolling will again loosen up tendons, reducing the chance of you starting to develop tendonitis or some other injury.

Keep these three warm up commandments in mind. It takes just ten minutes but getting a proper warm up before starting your workout session will make a big difference in how successful your session is.

Although managing Type 2 diabetes can be very challenging, it is not a condition you must just live with. Make simple changes to your daily routine - include exercise to help lower both your blood sugar levels and your weight.

Exercises and Workouts - Improve Your Fat Loss With Cardio Bursts

If you're going through your workout sessions and seeing relatively good results but still feel you could be seeing more, it would be worth your while to kick things up a notch.

How can you do that? Cardio bursts! Cardio bursts are a technique bringing cardio training to your strength training workouts, giving you the best of both worlds while also increasing your metabolic rate more significantly than it otherwise would be. Increasing your metabolic rate translates to you burning more calories both during as well as after the session is over.

But how do you do these "bursts?" Let's go over the details on what this technique is all about.

What Is A Cardio Burst? First let's talk about what these are. They are additions to your strength training workout... 30 to 60-second intervals of cardio training carried out between the strength training moves you're doing.

So for instance, you might perform a set of push-ups and then move into skipping for 30 to 60 seconds. Once you've finished skipping, you would then rest for 30 to 60 seconds before going back to the push-ups (or the next exercise in your workout routine).

You can either add a cardio burst to your routine after each and every strength training move you do. Or, if you prefer, you can add them after only so many depending on what your goal happens to be.

Options For Doing Cardio Bursts. What are the best options? You'll want to focus on exercises easy to start and stop so you can include them in your workout routine immediately. For instance, hopping on a stationary cycle would be less desirable as the transition takes some time.

Better options would include exercises such as jumping jacks, burpees, mountain climbers, running knee raises, or stair sprints (if working out in your home near a staircase).

All of these could be easily performed using your body weight. Then you will never run the risk of another gym goer being on a piece of equipment you need when exercising in a commercial gym.

Smart Tips To Remember. Finally, when adding cardio to your workout routine, do remember a few points. First, never let fatigue build so high you cannot sustain proper form. Remember, proper form is an absolute must at all times. If you don't use the correct form, you'll just get injured and sidelined - and then you won't be seeing results.

Note you may think twice about doing cardio bursts after leg training exercises. Doing a set of heavy squats and then attempting some burpees won't go over so well. Don't let your strength training be compromised by cardio bursts. If this means doing cardio bursts after upper body exercises, so be it.

So give cardio bursts a try next time you're in the gym and looking to ramp up your total rate of fat burning.

Although managing Type 2 diabetes can be very challenging, it is not a condition you must just live with. Make simple changes to your daily routine - include exercise to help lower both your blood sugar levels and your weight.