Never neglect your stretching. It’s a key element to maintaining your overall fit health—and warming up before hitting the weights is definitely a part of that process.
I was reading an article the other day about the five gym mistakes that even veterans make, and I was not surprised to see two of the mistakes—that I often make—on the list: 1) I tend to do a lot of the same strength exercises and 2) I don’t much care for warming up (although I do it more now than I used to and consider it a must).
Here’s the thing, I don’t like to waste time at the gym. My time is limited enough between the tons of other things I have to do, so I try to maximize my gym time as much as possible. That said, a 10-minute warm-up seems like an inconvenience, and an eternity, sometimes, and finding a new way to train my biceps, shoulders, back, etc., when everything I do works fine already is like…well, “why bother?”
However, two things come from continuing with that level of fit ignorance: 1) injury and 2) boredom.
The best thing you can do for your body is keep it flexible, and the best thing you can do for your regimen is to keep it fresh. If you can do both, you’re cooking with gas—as my late grandmother would say—and that’s a good thing.
So don’t skip your warm-up at the beginning and don’t get so obsessed with the result and feel of one particular exercise that you fail to challenge your muscles with something else. Change can be a good thing, if you’re doing it for the right reasons and with the right amount of guidance.
Living Fit Mommy 