A Great All-purpose Joint Mobility Warm-up

What's your sport? Whether you play basketball with friends after work, compete in the local soccer league, practice martial arts, or just go running solo each morning, warming up your body is absolutely crucial. An effective pre-exercise warm up routine can help your performance, speed recovery time, and prevent injuries.

Most people know that, but too often they don't consider what their warm up routine is actually accomplishing.

A lot of people have heard that you have to warm up, so before they dive in they spend a few obligatory minutes stretching their triceps and hamstrings. Any warm up is better than none, but a little cursory stretching isn't really enough. The point of warming up is to get your body ready to work hard and take impact.

Warming up your muscles is good, but since impact has a big effect on joints, warming up the joints can be even more important. If your joints are warmed up, they are less likely to be damaged in the course of your workout, and you may even find that your range of motion is increased, giving you that little edge over your competitors or bringing you a little closer to your personal goal.

One of the best ways to warm up the joints prior to working out is by engaging in a joint mobility warm up. The joint mobility warm up is designed to get blood flowing to your joints and to gently stretch out ligaments and tendons to increase your range of motion.

This warm up starts by gently finding mobility in all the joints without adding weight or impact. In the second stage, weight and impact can be added to the joints to get the heart rate up and the blood circulating.

Although there are no strict rules about how to do a joint mobility warm up, a good way is to start from the feet and work your way up the body to the head. This makes it easy to remember to warm up all the joints, and having a regular sequence ensures that you warm up your body thoroughly before each workout.

In the first stage, find the range of motion in each joint, starting with the feet and ankles, but do not strain the joints just yet.

Start by lifting your left foot off the ground and rotating your ankle in both directions. After doing the same on the right side, put your feet together and gently rotate your knees in a circle with your legs slightly bent. Move up to your hips, circling the hips in both directions in wide and narrow circles. The wrists and elbows are next, followed by the shoulders.

Open up the shoulders by stepping the left foot back. Make large circles from front to back with the right arm, as if you were swimming the backstroke. Go both directions, then switch sides. When you get to your neck, remember never to rotate the neck in complete circles. Instead, make semi-circles with your head, first with your head down, then with your head up.

After you've warmed up the joints without impact, you can optionally add a little weight to them to continue the warm up. Careful, repetitive actions are best. Squats are good for warming up the hip joints, and push-ups are useful wrist and shoulder warm ups. Bending at the waist or hopping up and down can help warm up the bones in your back and feet. Be careful not to torque or overextend your joints.

Although the joint mobility warm up may not feel very strenuous, you will notice a difference during and after your workout. Your joints will be less sore, and you will be able to take more impact without injury. Added to a routine of light stretching, the joint mobility workout could be just the thing to take your workout to the next level.