Skipping the warm-up might save a few minutes, but it comes at a cost. A proper warm-up prepares your body and mind for movement, activates key muscles, and primes your nervous system making you ready to work safely and efficiently. No matter your activity level, a thoughtful warm-up reduces injury risk, enhances performance, and helps your body recover.
What a Warm-Up Does for Your Body
- Increases blood flow and body temperature:
A warm-up raises your heart rate and gets blood flowing to your muscles. This helps increase flexibility in muscles and joints and reduces strain on tendons, ligaments, and joints, lowering the risk of injury.
- Activates muscles:
A warm-up ‘switches on’ the muscles that you’ll use during your session. By activating the right muscles, your body can perform movements more efficiently from the beginning, with less unnecessary strain.
- Primes your mind and nervous system:
A warm-up isn’t just physical it prepares your brain too. It helps you switch from school, work, or daily life mode into sport or training mode. This mental priming improves focus, motivation, coordination, reaction time, and confidence, setting you up to perform at your best from the very first movement.
How to Structure a Warm-Up
A warm-up doesn’t have to be long just 5-8 minutes can be highly effective! The goal is to prepare your body and mind for movement, not tire yourself out before you start. Here is a quick warm-up guide:
- General movement: Walking, cycling, or using a foam roller to increase blood flow and loosen tight areas.
- Dynamic stretching and mobility work: Move through range to stretch joints and muscles that tend to be stiff. We want to avoid holding static stretches in the warm-up—save this for cooling down. E.g. cat-cow or thoracic spine rotations, walking lunges with a torso twist, leg swings, or hip openers
- Activations: Use light resistance to ‘switch on’ muscles you are going to use. E.g. bodyweight squats, glute bridges, calf raises, banded pull-aparts, crab walks.
My Go To Warm Up Routine
For a lower body gym, sport, or running session:
Foam rolling (~2 minutes): glutes, hamstrings, calves, quads, adductors
World’s Greatest Stretch: 6 reps each side
Mini-band crab walks: 2 × 8 steps each direction
Mini-band monster walks: 2 × 8 steps each direction
Mini-band double-leg squats: 10 reps
For an upper body gym session:
Walking on a treadmill or light assault bike movement (~2 minutes)
Cat-cow stretch: 10 reps
Open book stretch: 5 reps each side
Band pull-aparts: 2 × 8 reps
Push-ups: 10 reps
Do you need help planning a warm up? It doesn’t matter if it’s for daily activity or specific to your sport. Our physiotherapists at Boost have the knowledge to create a solid warm up plan tailored to you.
