When you have to fit an exercise routine into your already busy schedule, you might be tempted to simply skip the warm up routine. This is absolutely the worst thing that you could do for your body. I am sure that you’ve heard horror stories about people getting injured while working out. These three words are the most important words that you could ever remember: don’t do that. When you skip your warm up, you are not only putting your body as risk for personal injury, but you are also making the workout more difficult and less effective. You also need to remember that not all injuries will show up right away. For the best results, it is important to warm up every time you work out.

When you begin your warming up routine it doesn’t have to eat up the time you allotted for exercise into your day. In fact, a decent workout only has to be 5 minutes long to do its job. Although it would only be better if you can spend a little more time than that at it. It doesn’t have to be boring either—you can mix up a number of great moves to make your warm up as fun as the rest of your exercising. Remember that a good warm up gets all of your muscles moving, even if you don’t think that you’ll be intensely working out a set of muscles on any particular day. All of your muscles still work together with each other even if they are broken down into groups. Many people forget this fact and it could cause small injuries to occur that may not show up for months. Warming up is also important regardless of if you’re doing cardiovascular exercises or lifting weights. You must remember that any kind of workout will be using your muscle groups and you need to stretch them out to help prevent that extra strain.

The moves you do for a warm up shouldn’t absolutely be difficult or make you break a sweat. They need to be slower and gentler for your body so that the stretching of the muscle groups is more natural. The main goal of the warm up isn’t to become a part of your workout. You simply want to slowly move muscles that you haven’t really thought about all day to help wake them up. Good moves, therefore, include things like jogging in place, doing jumping jacks, lunging, and jumping rope. And once again these should not be an all out burning type of exercise until you have woken up the different groups.

A good warm-up can also including slowly stretching your muscles in a variety of ways, although this is usually more effective for a cool-down. These can be anything like doing an easy stretch of each muscle group. Also consider exercises that work on balance and form in order to prepare you for the exercises you will be doing in the workout. Many people have laughed at the idea, but learning some simple dance techniques or even simple ballet has helped numerous people with issues of balance and coordination. Some of the greatest athletes have found that after applying some of these techniques it has helped them to become only better than before.

If you’re really short on time, why not try warming up before you even get to the gym. Slowly jog or power walk to the gym, park as far away as possible and lunge to the door, and take the stairs instead of the elevator. That way, when you get to the gym to workout your warm up routine is already half way done. There are many different ways that you can help to warm your body up before you begin your routine. Just use a little imagination and you will be surprised at what you can also come up with.

A good workout always builds in intensity. This is the best way to shed pounds and maintain a healthy weight. Weight loss workouts are only risky if you don’t warm up, because otherwise your body will respond to prevent injuries. Although you may be tempted to skip this step, that is never a good idea. You are only putting your own body at risk, and the whole purpose begin setting up an exercise routine is to become more healthy and to attain your ideal weight. And remember the last key ingredient. Have Fun.