I know a lot of us, (myself included) are so anxious to get up on our poles that we skip the warm up and a cool down? Ha! Forget it! With work, kids, school you name it our time is precious.
Why warm up? There are a couple good reasons. The first and I feel most important, is to prevent injury. If you choose to skip a warm up you might save yourself 5 or 10 minutes, but if you injure yourself because your body isn’t ready for activity you could loose days or even months because of muscle pains, strains and sprains. So play it safe and take the extra minutes for a proper warm up. Now I’m not saying you will never have an injury if you warm up, injuries happen, its just part of any activity. The second reason? I find it can put you in the right frame of mind. Maybe you had a long day and you just don’t feel like doing anything active. Use the warm up as an opportunity to say to yourself “ok I’ll warm up for 7 minutes and if I still don’t feel like working out I can quit” Chances are once you’ve started you wont feel like stopping!
The point of a warm up it to slowly elevate the pulse and body temperature which in turn will increase your muscle and tendon elasticity and lubricate your joints. Hey and think about it, with a warm body you’ll stick to the pole better!
What is a good warm up? Well, anything that gets your large muscle groups moving and your pulse up. I’m sure those of you who are taking the online lessons are aware I have a warm up and cool down example as part of the Studio Veena lessons now that doesn’t mean you can’t warm up another way. It’s more just to give you a good starting point, the basic idea of a warm up. You could even start a warm up off by dancing around your pole but….I wouldn’t suggest starting off with any spins until your fully warm. Spins require a great amount of shoulder/wrist mobility.
The basic rules of a warm up:
- Start off slowly
- Choose an activity that uses large muscle groups, make sure to include shoulder rolls/shrugs and wrist circles
- Warm up for 5 to15 minutes and if you deal with injury often then the longer the better
- At the end of your warm up you can do a few simple stretches. Unless your performing save the intense stretching for the end of your work out
Now why should we bother with the cool down? Well, you could get light headed or even faint and here’s why. When a vigorous exercise session is suddenly stopped, blood tends to accumulate in the lower body. So with reduced blood return, cardiac output is decreased and you can get light headed. Cooling down may help prevent delayed muscle stiffness too.
The point of a cool down is to slowly decrease the heart rate and metabolism.
What makes a good cool down? The opposite of the warm up! That means gradually decreasing your activity level. You don’t want to just plop yourself down on the floor after a long pole session. You can cool down by simply slowing down your dancing bit-by-bit, or marching in place working from larger muscles to smaller.
After you have let your body cool down for 5 to 10 minutes, this is the perfect time to do your stretching. I’ll be writing about stretching later on.
I hope you all are enjoying your time with Studio Veena and remember it’s the members who make it a great place to be.
