Would you like to know your heart rate? You need to notice the warm-up before starting any workout. It is unnecessary to spend a lot of time warming up before exercising, but there is no reason to. Warming up your major muscle groups will help you avoid injuries and keep your body warm this winter.
What is the reason for that? Cardio warm-ups can benefit your body in many ways. Your heart rate will rise, and your muscles will become more flexible afterward. Exercise can become more dangerous if your muscles are tired and stiff, so warming up helps prevent injuries while you exercise.
An effective warm-up will help you prepare for your upcoming cardio session. As a result, you’ll get the most out of your workout with your body better prepared.
Consider this short and efficient routine that will give you a full-body workout before your next workout.
8 Best Warm-Up Cardio Exercises
Whenever you see an athlete start their training, one thing that they do is to warm up. Take an eye! It is crucial for preventing injuries but warming up also has numerous other benefits.
1. Jumping Jack
Jumping a jack is a very well-known exercise. However, you should stand with feet together, core engaged, and hands at your sides.
- Clap your hands overhead as you jump your feet farther apart than hip-width apart.
- To return to the starting position, bring your arms to your sides and jump back into the air to return to the starting position.
- Keep repeating as fast and as high as you can.
2. Lunges
You should stand with your feet together before starting a lunge.
- Drop your hips toward the floor while stepping forward with one foot.
- Lie on your back until your front thigh is parallel to the ground.
- You should place your front knee directly underneath or slightly behind your toes.
- To return to the starting position, engage your core and push off with your same leg.
- Repeat these actions with the other portion.
3. Planks
You can protect your spine by strengthening your core and maintaining stability while working out by holding planks. Planks, like jumping jacks, require no additional equipment and may be performed anywhere.
- You should start by kneeling position.
- Maintain parallel alignment with your torso, keeping your hands and knees all on the ground.
- Your core must be tight so that you can balance on your forearms.
- Put your feet and forearms on the ground and extend your legs behind you.
- Hold this position as linearly as possible while remembering to breathe.
4. Crab Walk Jump
By doing the crab walk jump, you need to follow these steps:
- Place your hands at your hips and engage your core while standing tall.
- Bring your hips back and bend your knees to drop into a squat, allowing your knees to turn to at least 90 degrees.
- Step your right foot forward and let your left foot follow.
- Stay in the squat position.
- Move your right foot to the right one more time.
- Extend your legs and jump while fully extending your arms behind you to create momentum.
- Land lightly on the balls of your feet and instantly lower yourself into a squat.
- Perform the Crab Walk in the left direction.
- Step your left foot to the left and allow your right to follow while staying in your squat.
- You move your left foot one more time to the left, and then you explode up into another jump.
- Take a few steps and then switch directions again.
5. Butt Kickers
Do some butt kickers before your workout to prevent your activity from getting you smacked.
- Tap your heels on your glutes as you lightly jog.
- Warming up the quadriceps and hamstrings with foot kickers will help loosen up your leg muscles.
6. High Knee Pulls
Doing some high knee pulls will activate your legs muscles and stretch your guilts, lower back, and shoulder muscles. It prevents us from some serious injuries.
- Pull your knee towards the belly.
- Reaching up and then down with your hands.
- Your elbows and knees will be at the belly level simultaneously.
7. Cross Toe Touches
If you feel your legs are not completely warm-up, have some cross-toe touches. It will strengthen your core and prepare you for tackling hundreds of challenging strength activities.
- Bend down toward your knee.
- Touch your toe with the opposite hand.
- Do these squats every time you reach down.
8. Squat Reach
If you want to strengthen the lower back area of your body and enjoy a good cardio warm-up, have some squats to reach, then stand high in the cardio warm-up.
- Hold the power-up through the knee to strengthen the legs.
- Lift your arms above your head.
- Keep your head and eyes straight.
- Get back to the starting position.
- Repeat this 10 times.
Benefits of Cardio Exercises
Cardiovascular exercise improves not only your fitness but also your overall health when you raise your heart rate. In order to deliver oxygen, your respiratory system and cardiovascular system work together.
Regular cardio exercise strengthens the respiratory system and many of its organs. Since you breathe into your whole body, you can maintain all parts of it through training. Let’s have a look at the detailed advantages of cardio warm-up:
- Regular cardio exercises can help increase the amount of oxygen in the lungs. As your lungs become stronger, your heart will also become stronger.
- When you consistently do cardio training, your heart becomes more efficient, pumping more blood per beat, sending oxygen-rich blood more quickly throughout the body. As a result, you will also be able to rest longer without shaky heartbeats.
- Weight loss depends on burning more calories than you consume. Regular cardio exercise combined with good nutritional habits is a powerful weight-loss method.
- Regular cardio sessions are a great way to increase the number of calories your body is burning.
- Your stamina will also improve as long walking distances become more accessible, and you won’t get as tired doing regular activities such as going upstairs, doing housework, or taking care of the yard.
- Exercise can also improve sleep; cardio regularly can help people sleep more deeply and fall asleep fast.
- It may also improve sleep duration and decrease middle-of-the-night wake-ups, improving overall sleep quality.
- In addition to improving brain function, regular cardio exercises can also promote blood flow to the brain and blood vessel health.
- Furthermore, it stimulates the brain to release beneficial chemicals.
- Training sessions can boost athletic performance by improving speed, balance, and coordination, vital during sports.
- It can also help prevent injuries and improve endurance.
- Regular cardio warm-ups can also reduce the risk of health factors such as cardiovascular disease and developing type 2 diabetes.
Thus, regular cardio training can also increase your chances of living longer alright.
Side Effects of Cardio Exercises
There are two reasons why the warm-up isn’t as simple as just getting into shape: Your muscles don’t always contract with the same force or speed, and your body temperature varies greatly while you’re exercising.
If you’re looking to lose weight or get healthy, you’ll likely see your resting heart rate decrease as you exercise. But your heart rate doesn’t necessarily correlate with your energy level or strength.
A cardio warm-up increases the blood flow in our body, which causes the rise in temperature of our body. It causes physical and mental exhaustion, leading to stress and aggregation. It also reduces our muscle mass if we do not fuel them completely with calories to prevent the body from drawing body tissues and energy.
Most people train for countless hours, which leads them to injuries. If you are a marathon runner, then keep on your training for many hours, but if you are doing warm-up cardio exercises for normal routine exercise, keep it light and simple for 15 to 20 minutes. This will reduce your exercise exhaustion and prevent serious injuries.
FAQs
Are 5 minutes of cardio a day enough?
Yes, daily 5 minutes of cardio warm-up is enough for your body. If you are still unsure, you can do a 10 minutes warm-up, which may benefit your heart health.
Is it OK to stretch without warming up?
No, you don’t need to consider stretching as a warm-up. Before stretching, you need to do a light warm-up, just like running, walking, or jogging. If you do stretching in a warm-up, then you may hurt yourself.
How much cardio should I do for warm-up?
If you start hard body training, you should have a cardio warm-up for at least 15 minutes to prevent serious injuries.
Can I bathe immediately after a workout?
Before you hop into the shower, it’s important to wait at least 20 minutes after your workout.
Wrap Up
Remember that special populations and people with certain health conditions (diabetes, arthritis, asthma, high blood pressure, etc.) need to warm up for more than five minutes. It increases the blood flow in our body muscles, which causes the body’s temperature to rise. So those people who are suffering from these diseases try to keep their exercise lightened for a maximum of 10 minutes.
Talk to your doctor if you are unsure which warm-up cardio exercises to do or what program structure to follow.
