Warming up: the process of preparation for activity now must be part of the daily routine.

As a young person, I don’t remember putting any value to warming up for physical activity. We simply started to play. Playing was our warmup. Workout and cool down was stopping. That was it. That was many moons ago when we played for hours daily. The argument could be made that we were in a perpetual state of warm!

Coaching young people today, many who don’t move much during the day, they are anything but warm. Hips are tight, shoulders and neck tight….bodies don’t move well because they don’t move much.

Because most are inactive, we need warm up drills daily.

As we get older, everything seems stiff. The impact of not moving accelerates.

The antidote? Bodyweight squats & hold, high knee marches. Arm circles. Jumping jacks. Skipping and hopping. Glute bridge & lying leg lifts. Crawling, hanging, jumping jacks and wall slides. Warm up.

Back in the day, the above were called calisthenics. We had a Czechoslovakian gym teacher who took no guff, and we did our squats and marches and jumping jacks at the beginning of class. Then we did our activity.

While we might not have needed that back then, we did what we were told.

50 years later, young and old, we are not perpetually warm, we are cold and stiff because we don’t move enough. At 7 years old, 57 or 87, no movement during the day requires a focus practicing “warm up” drills.

The characteristics of good warmup (dynamic with mobility and muscle activation) and warming up the body’s core temperature need to be part of our daily routine, like brushing our teeth.
Move it or lose it.

Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog