While I feel like just about everyone has heard of a dynamic warm-up, I definitely don’t see them being performed that often and it’s a shame. They are easy to implement, can improve performance, and potentially prevent injury.
I’ll briefly discuss the benefits of a dynamic warm-up and then provide a video of one at the end.
Dynamic warm-ups have grown in popularity over the past 10-15 years – gone are the days of only static stretching for a “warm-up” before playing a sport. Multiple studies (too many to even list) have shown how dynamic warm-ups are superior to static stretching in preparing an athlete for performance.
If you are one of those athletes who needs a few minutes of game to go by before really feeling ready to play, you probably aren’t warming up properly. You should take your warm-up as seriously as your workout/training/sport.
Some of the benefits of a dynamic warm-up are:
- Increases heart rate and blood flow (in muscles and in brain)
- which significantly increases the amount of nutrients and oxygen brought to muscles
- Increases body temperature
- Improve range of motion
- tendons and muscles become more elastic
- Helps activate the central nervous system (brain and nerves)
- essentially primes your muscles and neural pathways – improves your coordination/movement patterns
I think it’s fairly obvious to see how all of these effects will help improve your performance and decrease your risk of injury.
A dynamic warm-up should be approximately 10-15 mins long and should make you feel a little out of breath afterwards (you should not be gasping for air – if you are, then you should probably put some emphasis on conditioning).
Below is an example of a dynamic warm-up – there are endless possibilities when it comes to what to put into your warm-up, so feel free to play around with what it is in the video or incorporate some things you already do. The warm-up in the video is intended for activities/sports where you are required to run/sprint.
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phqNGyO0aZc[/embedyt]