In all classes and personal trainings, you can expect to spend the first 10-15 minutes with warming up. Any guesses why do we really need it? No, not to get the heart rate going, or not mostly and mainly.
Before any kind of exercise, especially if you were sitting all day before that it's important to prepare your body that it will do something different. If you really want to be good for yourself, you can do the same in the morning as you were in bed for quite a couple of hours in the same position.
The real purpose of the warm-up: you prepare your body and your brain to movement. It will make your training safer and more efficient. Therefore: you will get less tired, lift heavier weights, will less likely to get injured.
The steps of the warm-up:
- Joint mobility. Move every joint in the greatest possible range. Circles with your hands, feet, head, arms, etc. This prepares your joints for loading. There is a lubricating fluid in your joints, that can become jelly-like, especially when it's cold or when you don't move enough. Moving the joints will turn it back to fluid state, and a well-lubricated joint is moving more smoothly, you will less likely grind the cartilages away and hurt yourself under load.
- GPS. Rock back and forward, roll over, change your head's position. Warming up your senses. Your body has it's own GPS system: the visual (so you know where you are and what is around you), the vestibular (sense of balance - lets you know which way is up or down) and the proprioceptive (your self-sense - lets you know where are your limbs, what your body is doing). If you 'turn them on' before the exercise, they will work more effectively, your moves will be more coordinated.
- Torso coordination. Plank, walking push-up, crawling. It turns your core muscles on, and it turns them on in the correct order. It teaches your muscles how to work together. The question is not only how strong your muscles are, but also how well do they work together. Your overall strength greatly depends on it. So is your safety as it will help you balance, save your back from heavy loads, etc.
- Now you can get that heart rate going. Your body is prepared for loading, you can now do something most people think is a warm-up. It is only the last step of the warm-up and connecting step to your actual 'training'.
It only takes 10 or 15 minutes, but try once, pay attention to your body afterwards, and answer this question for yourself: did your 'workout' feel any different? Could you do more? Did you get less tired / less sore? And at the end: does it worth to 'sacrifice' 10 minutes of your training time in order to make the next 50 minutes 2 times as effective? You don't need to be a mathematician to add this all up.
I teach these warm-up techniques on both the Primal Move and Kettlebells classes. I often go out to sports teams to lead them a 10-15 minute warm-up session before training. If you want to learn them, you can come to the classes or just ask me to teach you in your own time.