Warm ups are important!

The hammy is still being a bit of a nuisance, but luckily, it seems like it's just a strain. Took the week off from lifting & exercising. Something I haven't done in several months. So even though it's killing me to not be hitting the gym, I know that my body was giving me a warning that I may have been doing too much.
After talking to a dear friend, with a knowledge of physical therapy, it made sense to share the things that I neglected and push for my clients and followers to head my words.

As most know, I'm super busy, so to fit in 2 hour workouts like I was, I started slacking in the warm up department. I even went to the weight room cold. Can you believe that I was pretending like I could get a warm up from walking up the stairs?! So dumb!! So not only did running cause my strained hamstring, but I probably deadlifted when I wasn't quit warm enough. What was I thinking?! I could've hurt myself so much worse, I am very lucky!

So it's back to the grind. Doing a 10 minute warm up before I do any activity, a habit I so easily found myself getting out of.

Here is/was my general warm up routine:
Strength Days
-start with a slow 2 min warm up on the elliptical
-at a slow pace bump up the resistance from 0 to 3 for another 2 minutes
-at a slow bump up the resistance from 3 to 5 for another 2 minutes
-take the resistance down to 0 and bump up the exertion for the next 4 mins
Nothing should hurt or feel too intense when doing this cardio. Good rule of thumb, if you have started sweating, you are warm.

Run Days
-run days require a lot more dynamic stretching, which is crucial to warming up before runs

http://www.runnersworld.com/the-starting-line/how-and-why-you-should-warm-up-before-a-run
-This is a great reference and is primarily the moves I do when warming up for my runs.

I can't stress to you how important it is to warm up. Even I have been lazy and skipped it, it was all just, "to bite my nose to spite my face". I'm 3 weeks out from my big race day and I'm injured and resting. Not exactly great timing for something you have spent months training for.

I know I am beating a dead horse, especially to my online clients who I have beat them over the head about warming up. I get it, believe me, I get the pressure of time restraints, but it's something everyone must do. Don't work hard just to lose it all by being lazy. Learn from me....also, do as I say, not as I do? HA!

Happy Friday!
Susan