Pre-Exercise Warm Up
It’s really important that you do a brief warm up prior to exercising, if you are to derive maximum benefit from any exercise you do. This warm-up will gradually raise your body temperature and increase your heart rate. It will increase the flow of blood through your tissues, delivering oxygen and nutrients to your muscles, and making them more pliable, thus preparing them for activity and greatly reducing the likelihood injuring yourself by straining, or tearing, a muscle.
Repeated gentle articulation of a joint through its range of motion also serves to stimulate synovial fluid, which provides protective lubrication within the joint and brings nutrients to joint tissues that have no direct blood supply. After we reach 35, our synovial fluid becomes thinner and we produce less of it, making our warm-ups even more essential.
Research suggests that a warm up should last for a minimum of 10 minutes, so we’ve designed a warm up that consists of 12 exercises that should be performed for one minute each. They will ensure that you get the maxim benefit from whichever exercise programme you do.
Post-Exercise Warm Down
To get maximum benefit from the exercise videos you purchase, it’s really important that you do a brief warm down after exercising. The process gradually returns your body to its resting state and, by draining any waste products that build up after exercise, helps to reduce soreness and fatigue. It makes all the difference when it comes to avoiding injury and capitalising on your training.
When you have been working to strengthen muscles, it is vital to stretch them at the end of your programme. Strength work requires muscles to contract repeatedly and, unless you finish with some light stretching, they will remain tight, and the range of movement of their respective joints will be compromised.
The same is true after playing a round of golf. The principal muscles used need to be stretched, because golf is essentially a one-sided game and you can gradually develop serious imbalances in your musculature.
This warm down routine will allow you to relax gradually, improve flexibility and slow your heart rate. It should only take about 5 minutes to complete.