Before and After a Workout

There are two aspects of exercising that should be done, every time without fail, so as to have the best work out each time. Warming up before you start your exercise regime and then cooling down after you are done will without doubt enhance your workout performance for the better.

Warming Up

Starting any calisthenics with no warm up is actually a serious way to cause injury to yourself. Before starting any exercises, muscles in our bodies are stiff hence it is important to loosen them up before attempting any vigorous activity.

Here are some warm up and stretching tips:

• To raise the body's temperature, a warm-up should start with aerobic activity, usually light jogging.
• For your upper body stretching the arms always improves the blood circulation to the upper torso. While doing these exercises, the body should be balanced. While lifting the arms, feel the stretch coming from the waist. Take deep breaths so that you can relax.
• Shoulder stretching will help you increase your range of motion. You can do these poses while seating or standing. Let your arms follow your shoulders.
• Leg Raises are a good stretching exercise for the hamstrings. While raising the leg, only one leg should be lifted while the other one must be touching the ground. The hips should touch the floor and the chin should be tucked towards the chest.

These are some very basic stretches just to get you started. It is best to seek advice from your fitness instructor as to what suits your body type.

Cooling down

After having worked up your body, some stretching to cool down is as important as the warm up process, this is because when we work out we push our muscles out of their ordinary state and work out the body to the maximum, an unwinding has to take place, in the form of cooling down.

• Spinal rocking relieves the tension from the lower back, which occurs after a long work out routine. This is also very useful if you are transiting from seated to standing poses or vice versa.
• Light aerobic exercise such as walking or easy indoor cycling are a great way to cool down, as both of these will allow you to hydrate yourself.
• Warm clothing is also essential in the cooling down process. This is because it prevents heat loss from your body.
• Finally whatever stretches you may do to relax your wound up muscles, make sure you do it really slow and hold each stretch for a good 10-15 seconds.

If you're going to sweat it out, make sure you do it the right way, workout results have a direct bearing on the kind of effort you put in. Even if your workout time is a mere half an hour, make sure you still keep those 15 minutes for the warm up and cool down practice. The key is to ease oneself into and out of exercising.