Before exercising, we must do some warm-up exercises, which can help us quickly get into the exercise state, reduce the chance of injury, and improve our training effectiveness. Many people lack warm-up before exercise, leading to decreased exercise effectiveness and directly affecting the quality of the entire training day. Some even get injured due to insufficient warm-up. Therefore, today we will recommend some simple and basic warm-up exercises.
Warm-Up Exercises Before Working Out
1. Cross Jump with Arms and Legs
The first exercise I recommend is the cross jump with arms and legs. You might not fully understand this exercise just by its name, but don’t worry—we’ll provide detailed visual demonstrations for you to follow. When performing this jump, keep your arms and legs crossed and complete the exercise using the cross jump method.
2. High Knees
The second exercise we recommend is high knees. This is a highly effective warm-up exercise. When doing high knees, try to lift your legs as high as possible. If this feels too easy, you can add arm swings. Control your pace, and if you add arm swings, make sure to maintain a steady speed.
3. Butt Kicks
Most of you are probably familiar with butt kicks. This exercise is very effective for working out the legs and serves as an excellent warm-up. When performing this exercise, you can place your hands on your hips to reduce the impact on your hips from kicking your heels back. After placing your hands on your hips, kick your heels back as far as possible, ensuring they touch your palms.
4. Jogging in Place
After completing the above three exercises, you can do some jogging in place. Of course, you can also do this exercise first to give your body an adaptation phase, signaling that it’s about to engage in higher-intensity training. We’ve placed this exercise fourth to give your body a buffer and rest period, but the rest shouldn’t stop entirely, so we chose jogging in place. If this is still challenging, you can substitute it with marching in place.
5. Leg Lift and Touch
You might not fully understand the leg lift and touch exercise, but if not, refer to the visual demonstration. When lifting your leg upward, try to keep it straight and maintain a rhythmic motion, using your arms to touch it. This exercise is very simple as long as you keep the rhythm, so make sure to find your pace and perform it rhythmically.
In addition to the warm-up exercises mentioned above, you can also use jogging or jumping rope to warm up your body. Before exercising, we recommend doing these warm-up exercises to reduce the chance of injury and double your training effectiveness. No matter which warm-up method you choose, as long as it serves its purpose, it’s good. Before warming up, you can also do some stretching exercises.
