If you pull a muscle while lifting weights, that can force you to take a break for a while. You can lose some of those gains you’ve been working so hard on, and it can set you back for a while.
It’s important to warm up before lifting weights, as this helps you avoid injury and enables you to work out for longer. If you don’t want to put a quick end to your workout and you don’t want to injure yourself as you weightlifting, then warming up is essential.
How to warm up before lifting weights? It helps to know the right kind of warmup session to do. You want to stretch out your muscles in such a way so that they’re pliable, flexible, and ready to be used.
The kind of warm up that’s right for you will depend on your weightlifting session. Are you going for an intense work out, and will you be working out for more than half an hour? You’re going to have to warm up for longer.
The kind of warmup you do should be based on your workout session.
If not, you can overextend yourself and suffer an injury, because you didn’t do a proper warmup session.
I want to share with you how to warm up wrists before lifting weights and other parts of your body that you use for weightlifting. I hope these suggestions are helpful to you so that your workouts are more effective and you spend less time recovering from them.
Warm Up Your Arms
I like to start my warmup sessions off simply, and there’s no simpler stretching exercises than arm rolls.
To do this one, just hold your arms out at shoulder height, straight out with your fingers extended. Your body should be making a T shape if you have the right form.
From that starting position, just move your arms in a clockwise rotation. You don’t need to move them far or have a wide range of motion, but just make circles with your arms in a clockwise direction for about 30 seconds.
Then, rotate in the opposite direction, going counterclockwise with your movements.
This engages not just your arms, but also your shoulders and your back.
Warm Up Your Back
It’s not just your arms that are used for weightlifting. You put a lot of weight on your back and can stretch your back if it’s not properly stretched and warmed up before weightlifting.
So, I definitely want to recommend focusing on your back for the warmup, and I’ll show you how to warm up lower back before lifting weights.
Toe touches help with the forward movement, and you start these in a standing position and extend your arms in front of you, with fingers pointing straight ahead.
Bend down at the waist until you can touch your toes, or as far as you can go comfortably. Hold that position for a few seconds and then return back to the starting position. You can do this about 20 times for your toe touch warmup.
I also recommend working your back from side to side. For this warmup exercise, put your hands open on your hips with your elbows sticking out.
Once again, bend from the waist, but this time you’re moving from side to side rather than forward and down. Bend to the left side and hold that for about two seconds, and then bend back all the way to the right side, and hold that as well before returning to the initial position.
This is a great way to limber up your back and ensure you’re not injuring it while you’re working out. Weightlifting places a lot of pressure on your back, especially if it’s not properly prepped before the workout.
This part of your warmup session is very important, especially if you have back problems.
Aerobic Exercise
When searching up, “How to warm up before lifting weights with Scooby,” I saw that this weightlifting guru recommended doing squats as a warmup for weightlifting. I think this is a great idea, because it’s part of a cardio program.
Doing cardio before you weight lift helps to get your blood pumping and prepares your muscles for some strenuous activity.
You obviously don’t want to wear yourself out with your stretching and cardio, so you want to keep things light and short.
The main focus of your workout is obviously going to be on the weightlifting, but you definitely want to devote enough time to your warmup so that you don’t injure yourself while you weight lift.
Other cardio exercises I would recommend, if you’re in the gym warming up, would be to run in place and to do jumping jacks. These exercises don’t take up much room and they help to get your heart pumping and prepared for the workout ahead.
How Many Minutes Do I Need to Spend Warming Up Before Lifting Weights
I’ve talked about how important the warming up period is before weightlifting, and of course all throughout my blogs I have covered the importance of warming up before working out.
I know warming up is critical to reduce the recovery time after a workout and also helps to stretch out and prepare the muscles.
It’s also great for ensuring you get the most out of your workout, preparing your metabolism for the exertion ahead.
Warming up before exercise also helps lessen the shock of a workout. Going from very little activity to intense activity can be rough on your body, particularly your heart and your muscles.
So, I definitely recommend warming up for whatever kind of exercise you’re going to do, though the type of work you do will depend on the type of exercise you’re doing.
How long do I have to warm up before lifting weights? For an intense weightlifting session, I would recommend about 15 minutes of warm up.
If you’re only going to be doing weights for about 30 minutes and you know it won’t be too intense, I think a warmup of five to ten minutes is perfectly fine.
I would recommend that you check with your personal trainer or gym instructor about your warmup time and how long that should be.
Each person is different, and their needs are different as well.
What works for me might not work for you, and it’s best to get a personalized recommendation as far as your warmup time goes.
I will say this, though, about the duration of your warmup: if you find that you are very sore after your workout and that it takes you a long time to recover or you feel like you can’t do your workout for as long as you like, you may want to consider extending your warmup period.
There are other factors that can cause these kinds of problems, but I think a lot of people spend too little time warming up.
If you take the time to warm up properly, you’ll minimize a lot of issues and avoid many problems that other people run into.
It’s worth it to spend the extra few minutes warming up so that you don’t have to take the next day off or cut your workout session short.
You can also find a ton of other warm up ideas online if you search. I just covered some of the basics, but there’s a lot of specific to warm up routines that people will go through, and you should find a routine that works for you and that you feel comfortable with.
