Stay@home workouts: Warming up
Stay@home workouts have become increasingly popular, especially with recent restrictions and social distancing closing gyms. Stay@home workouts, however, bring with them many challenges. What do I do? When will I find the time? Where do I do it? How can I keep it interesting? These are all valid questions – and today we are looking at warmups for a stay@home workout to help prevent injury.
The biggest problem faced with stay@home workouts is the lack of supervision and knowledge of what exercises go well together so you don’t end up with an annoying niggle or painful injury from your exercises. The key to avoiding a lot of common injuries is a good warm-up. Getting your body ready for the movements and load that come as part of any workout is paramount to protecting your joints and muscles.
Unique to stay@home workouts is the type of exercises being performed due to the lack of equipment and often the space available. Some popular exercises that have become a mainstay to many iso-workouts include squats, push-ups and planks. These exercises can be performed anywhere and are familiar for most gym-goers. The problem isn’t the exercise but the volume of the same exercise over and over again, and the body’s tolerance to be able to deal with this increase.
Your stay@home warm-up should involve movements that you’re about to do in the workout so your muscles are “warm” for when you need them to do more work.
A little routine I get clients to do as their stay@home warmup involves forward bends, squats, walkouts, plank, push-ups, down-dog, walk backs, and hip hinge to standing. You can google all the individual exercises if you aren’t familiar with them, but essentially you are aiming for one smooth transition from exercise to exercise. It’s akin to a traditional sun salute in a yoga class, breaking down each individual movement to warm up the muscles in those positions. I find working through this flow 5 times is sufficient to get the body prepped for what is to come. You can make it longer by spending more time in the different positions, or shorter by just focusing on a couple of reps of a particular exercise. All in all, it is an easy and full-body warm-up that will get you ready for whatever stay@home workout you have planned for the day. The added bonus is that this little routine can be a workout on its own and do the first thing or during the workday to get your blood moving.
The main idea behind any warmup is that it “warms up” the body and gets it ready for what’s to come. So whether it is a compact routine like my suggestion or a bunch of little exercises you saw on social media or remembered from the gym, you should feel like you have done a mini workout before the main workout.
If you have any questions or want a demo of the suggested warm-up, reach out to us in the clinic.
Good luck with your stay@home workouts!
