The role and importance of warm-up
You know that physical activity is important for your health and you exercise with some regularity. Yet instead of feeling fit and healthy, you constantly have pain somewhere. Your heel, knee, calf, hip. Do you feel like you step on a hedgehog when you take your first steps out of bed? You haven't been injured or strained and you can't understand what's wrong… If any of this sounds familiar, read my article! It's about the importance of warm-up.
The majority of people fit exercise into their daily rush.
- You squeeze in a tennis match with a client or colleague instead of lunch.
- You stop in the parking lot, put on your shoes in the car and run a lap around the island.
- On the way home you drop by the gym, jump on a treadmill or a stair climber…. you do the daily “necessary” and move on.
- You have dinner with the family, tuck the kids into bed and rush to the sports hall so you won't miss the Wednesday “mandatory” basketball or football.
One way or another, you push yourself hard and the next day you can barely get out of bed. Everything aches, most notably your heel and the sole of your foot. It feels like you are walking on a hedgehog. You grit your teeth and fight your way to the bathroom… then you slowly get past the pain. It follows you during the day, but somewhat less intensely…
What could this be?
This is so-called overload inflammation, affecting the Achilles tendon or the plantar fascia, or sometimes both. During running these tendons absorb the “energy” of your body weight. The harder you exercise, the firmer the ground, or the heavier you are, the greater the load they take with every step. The extra load from the movement is too much for them, and they respond with inflammation.
What could be the cause?
In the vast majority of cases one simple reason leads to it: lack of warm-up.
Why does it develop?
There are physiological reasons for this!
When you sit at your desk, in the car or on the couch, your body supplies blood to muscles and tendons only at the level required for sitting. It narrows off unneeded vessels so that only as much blood reaches those tissues as is necessary in an inactive state. As a result, muscle and tendon temperature drops — they cool down. They become stiffer, less elastic and more prone to tearing.
If you start training from such a “resting” state, you can't be surprised that your muscles and tendons are "very surprised." Nobody told them you were about to start…
Your body finds itself jumping straight from a “sleeping” state into “race pace.” It immediately tries to adapt: increasing breathing, oxygen uptake and CO2 elimination. By opening the "sluices" and "channels," it has to deliver extra blood to the muscles involved in movement. Running uses many muscles: the leg muscles, glutes, trunk muscles that keep your torso upright, and even the arms, shoulders and neck muscles. They all need oxygen and nutrients… at the same time.
It takes a few minutes for your body to meet this new demand. It may take up to 10 minutes before enough blood reaches your calves, Achilles tendons and soles.
If you haven't torn or injured anything, then only after this does exercise begin to feel good, because by then your circulation has adjusted, the muscle has warmed up and the tendon has regained the necessary elasticity.
The Viking warrior and your chances of survival…
During those first few minutes you create a state in which every cell of your muscle fibers and tendons literally "fights for its life." Your muscles didn't receive enough blood and oxygen. There wasn't enough readily available energy for that cadence. During that initial oxygen-deficient period a number of metabolites are produced that further increase stiffness and, of course, impair performance…
If this is unclear, here's an example… Imagine you're peacefully dozing in your bed when a Viking warrior bursts in, axe in hand, trying to kill you. You'd have to defend yourself, although you can't even tell whether it's a dream or reality… and the first thing at hand is your small pillow… How do you see your chances of success?
I've already seen several doctors…
Patients who come to me for advice usually tell me they've visited many clinics, tried many things and nothing helped. Yet they received:
- painkillers,
- non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and because nothing changed,
- multiple steroid injections directly into the painful area,
- they bought new running shoes, added insoles or heel lifts,
- they saw a masseur and went to physiotherapy,
- there was taping, ultrasound, laser therapy, shockwave therapy and finally X-ray imaging — none of which helped…
There was one thing they didn't do… They didn't look for or eliminate the cause. They continued to start their activity the same way as before… off you go, throw yourself into it, with cold muscles and tendons.
What's the solution? Warm-up.
Before exercise you must move the muscles enough to bring them to the optimal temperature required for the load, so they regain elasticity and tensile strength.
Starting just a little slower is not a warm-up… standing on the pitch and kicking the ball “half-heartedly” is not a real strategy. Those half-measures are nothing.
The role of technology in warm-up
Modern sports muscle stimulators include a Warm-up program. Clinical studies have shown that these 10–15 minute programs increase blood circulation in the treated muscles by 300% and significantly raise their temperature. That's enough for the muscle and tendon. Before you step out the gate or into the gym, take time for this.
Not only can you prevent Achilles and plantar pains, but also the typical muscle strains and sprains that occur in the first minutes of loading.
A properly prepared muscle is like a warrior standing on the castle ramparts off whom the axe-wielding Viking bounces… you can avoid overload and chronic strains…
What else can be done?
When you stop training, many metabolites remain in your muscles (for example lactic acid, creatine kinase). These also cause fatigue and stiffen muscle and tendon. If you leave these metabolites in your muscles, your recovery will be prolonged.
Muscle stimulators can help here too. Recovery programs have been shown to flush out 40–50% of metabolites if applied within 2 hours after training! This halves the recovery time and the work your body has to do for it.
It's well worth it… but I will write about recovery another time…
