The Perfect Warm-Up

What is in the essence of a perfect warm-up? Essentially, it is important not to over-strain your muscles that will impede your performance during the actual training. Perfect is in striking the right balance in warming up all your various muscle groups. To me, warming up exercises can be divided into 3 parts – running/skipping/bouncing on old tires, shadow boxing and bag work. The idea is to prepare your body for the vigorous exercises that follows. It is not necessary to spend an excessive amount of time during warm up – the bulk of your training time should be spent on the techniques and strength training – an ideal estimate should be approximately 30 minutes.

Running / Skipping / Bouncing on old tires

Running

These exercises are substitutable. Running is essential for the development of leg muscles and stamina and while many say that it is most ideal to run in the morning, do note that the peak time for running is definitely not the first thing in the morning. Due to daily fluctuations in our body temperature, scientists have found that our temperature is the lowest in the morning and peaks in mid afternoon. And wholly from a running perspective, athletes perform better when their body temperature is higher and thus many prefer to run in the late afternoons and evenings. And because our body’s vital functions peak at the same time, it is found that our lungs work best in the evenings too.

I have broken down the pros and cons of running at different times of the day from a survey conducted by Running Times.

Early Morning – The Mental Hurdle

The peak time for running is definitely not first thing in the morning. Virtually all bodily functions are at their worst at this hour. Body temperature is low, which means that muscles will feel stiff, lung function is poor, and not having any substantial food intake for the last ten hours significantly depletes your energy stores. All these means the same level of exertion is likely to feel much harder at this time of day than later on. To top things off, exercising early will leave you more prone to injury or worse. Research has also shown that this is the most common time of day for heart attacks and strokes.

Just because nearly everything physical is against you at this time, however, doesn’t mean the early morning session has no benefit. The very fact that it feels harder means it’s good for building up mental strength.

Mid-Morning – Muscle Booster

Lung performance and body temperature are much improved from the early morning, plus if you’re training at this time you should have had a good protein and carb-filled breakfast, meaning your energy levels will be much higher. However, although most of your physical functions will be improved from the early morning, they are still not as good as later in the day. Furthermore, if you work normal hours, a mid-morning run is likely only to be possible on the weekend anyway. If you do put in a mid-morning run, on a Saturday for example, you might want to make it a speed or hills session in which building up your calf and quad muscles is the aim. The reason is that most scientists agree this is the best time of day to boost muscle. “There’s a strong argument for doing weight training in the morning if you’re interested in building muscle,” said Dr. Stephen Bird, from the School of Human Movement Studies in Australia. “This is because testosterone, the hormone most responsible for muscle-boosting, is at its highest around this time.”

Lunchtime – The Convenient Substitute

The lunch-time run is extremely popular with all those who work normal hours. Getting out of the office and breaking up the day with some running seems like a great idea. And indeed there are positives to training at this time, but mostly they have to do with your work performance rather than your running performance. "Many people choose to exercise at lunch because it doesn’t eat into their free time," said workplace psychologist Mike Clinton. "Plus it perks you up and is likely to make you more productive in the afternoon."

In fact, nearly all bodily functions experience a lull in the middle of the day, particularly those such as lung function and body temperature, which are crucial to running performance. Like the early morning, this doesn’t necessarily make it a bad time of day to train; just make sure you save those time trials, or sessions where you’re looking to run your absolute best, for later.

Afternoon and Evening – Score!

It has been known for some time that most physical activities are best performed in the mid- to late-afternoon, as this is when body temperature peaks, meaning the muscles are at their most supple and running at speeds that feel tough in the early morning will feel much easier. Recently this has been bolstered by a study by Dr. Boris Medarov of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York, which found that lung function was more than 6 percent better in the afternoon than at other times during the day. So this is definitely the time of day to run if you’re going for a personal best.

If your gym trains in the evening, you’ll probably want to sweat out your personal best before class starts! A short 10 min run should be sufficient.

Skipping / Bouncing on old tires

Skipping is an intense cardiovascular workout, more tiring than running I would say. Skipping strengthens the muscles in your upper and lower body and also promotes the hand-leg coordination that is much needed in most Muay Thai techniques.

Skip in sets, usually 3 sets of 3 mins each should be sufficient but if you feel that it is not warming up your body enough, bring it up to 3 sets of 5 mins or 2 sets of 10 mins. Do not skip with both your feet bouncing off the ground at the same time. Alternate between legs, for example, tap 3 times on your right leg and then switch to your left. It might not seem easy at first but you’ll get used to it.

The same goes for bouncing on tires.

Here’s a good video on jump rope: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvEnee4rF4k

I’ll update a bit more on shadow boxing and bag work for warm up in the later part of the day.