Welcome to the Get Fit Guys' quick and dirty tips to get moving and shape up.

My name is Brock Armstrong and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

Many of us grew up being told that we should warm up before we exercise by holding a pose like a calf stretch or a forward fold

to loosen us up, make us stronger, and make us more injury-proof.

Now, while it is true that we should definitely warm up before we exercise,

holding a static stretch is not the way to go about it.

Back when I was in grade school, wearing my split shorts and my knee-high sports socks,

while participating in the mandatory track events to earn that scrap of satin in the form of a participation ribbon, well, stretching was a ritual that we all performed before the main event.

Back then, we were all programmed to believe that we absolutely had to stretch our muscles before

exerting them especially if we wanted to avoid things like the dreaded groin pole well times have

changed and luckily so have gym uniforms now these days there are many studies that caution us away from stretching before workouts.

According to research, not only does our performance suffer, like less strength, less speed, and less power,

but it also does not protect us against injury, even the dreaded groin pull.

So what is a warm-up then? Well, a warm-up is exactly what it sounds like.

It's a routine that warms up the body, literally and figuratively. A warm-up should activate what's

called the synovial fluid or the lubricant that's in your joints. It should raise your heart rate and it should raise

your body temperature as well. There's some great info over in the article called What is

the best way to warm up? And I'll link to that in the show notes over at get fit guy.quick and

dirty tips. But in a nutshell, what it comes down to is warm-ups come in many forms, and all of them

should involve some sort of cardiovascular movement, activities like walking slowly, then

gradually building into a jog, or cycling at low intensity and building up to a moderate

effort over a few minutes.

...