Warm Up Properly To Reduce Risk Of Injury During Work Outs, Training, Competitions for Texarkana Sports

I grew up playing many competitive team sports, like so many kids… playing baseball and football among other activities.

The coaches would generally have us out on the field before practice doing about ten minutes of static stretching.

This was before getting into training which was generally running around the field and whatever else they had in mind before doing some skill training.

Over the years, we’ve learned a lot about how to prepare your body for exercise.

As it turns out, static stretching really doesn’t have much of a use – especially as a warm up.

The purpose of a warm up is to prepare your body for harder training whether in the gym or on the field.

The warm up should start off with movement, slowly increasing in intensity as the cardiovascular system begins to kick into gear increasing heart rate and circulation.

This increased blood flow increases your body’s temperature and begins to loosen up your joints.

The greater blood flow to the muscles increases temperature, reduces their stiffness, and prepares you for physical activity.

This slow, gradual movement based approach helps reduce your risk of sports injuries.

Many other factors in addition to good warm ups are important to help reduce your risk of sports injuries ranging from:

• cooling down after exercise,
• maintaining proper nutrition and hydration,
• good joint biomechanics and ranges of motion of every joint – if a joint does not have it’s normal range of motion then it is at much greater risk of injury when you place training and competition demands upon it,
• having the structural strength and coordination to do the activity that you are doing at the intensity you are asking of your body,
• ensuring proper recovery between workouts (sleep, nutrition (again), managing stress, avoiding over training, doing various types of recovery work, and more).

Chiropractors are an important part of your sports health care team is you are wanting to perform your best, reduce your risk of injury, and to heal up as quickly as possible when an injury does occur.

This is why the vast majority of the highest level athletes in professional sports and Olympics use a Chiropractor, so that they can perform at their best day in and day out as they push their bodies.

BUT the benefits are as important for kids as they are for adults, even though kids are a little more resilient when it comes to many soft tissue injuries and they often don’t yet have as many chronic problems – it’s best to keep them that way!

Chiropractic has many other benefits for athletes.

A recent study published by Haavik (et al) looked at the ability of the brain to drive muscle function with a single chiropractic adjustment.

The lead researcher, Haavik, reported that the changes following a single adjustment “were almost identical to 3 weeks of strength training.”

That is a very impressive result.

It’s no wonder so many athletes in all sports rely on the Chiropractor to keep them performing at their best.

You can read more about the study published in the Journal of Experimental Brain Research here (don’t worry, it just sounds intimidating!).

Need a Texarkana Chiropractor that is an athlete himself?

Contact Us and we’ll get you set up to see Dr. Hagebusch.