Warming Up 101

Essentially, the purpose of a warm up is simple: It limbers up your body, gets your blood
flowing, and by doing so ensures that your body is well prepared for whatever exercise you’re
planning to undertake.

Jumping straight in without making sure that your body is ready is a recipe for disaster.

If your muscles are tight and tense, you could end up injuring them, and if your blood isn’t
flowing well, then you could easily push yourself too far, too fast, and cause other
complications.

In essence – you don’t want any of this to happen.

So the solution is simple: Warm up well!

Bearing this in mind, let’s walk you through some of the basics of a good warm up, so that
you’re fully able to carry it out yourself, and thus getting you one step closer to having a great
free pregnancy exercises. Read More >>

Keep in mind that your warm up is, really, part of your free pregnancy exercises itself, and it should be carried
out right at the start of every exercise program!

About 5 to 10 minutes of warming up is ideal. During that time, the bulk of it should be spent
on stretching your various muscle groups. Naturally, the inclination may be to focus on the big
muscle groups, and the ones that your free pregnancy exercises is going to use most – but really, you should try
to encompass as many muscles as possible.

One way to go about stretching effectively is to start at the top and work your way down.

What this means is that you should start with your neck muscles, then go on to your shoulders,
upper arms, chest, lower arms, torso, back, and waist. Various stretches could help you to
stretch each of these muscles, so you should have no problem finding one that works for each,
or multiple muscles at once.

After that, head further down to your groin, hamstring, upper legs, and calves as well as ankles.

As you can see, that’s quite a lot of stretching, but each stretch that you perform is going to
increase the benefits that you obtain. In short – you’re going to be all the better for it in the
long run.

When you are actually stretching, a common mistake that many people make is to stretch until
they feel a slight pain. Frankly, this ‘no pain, no gain’ logic is faulty, and you should never push
yourself far enough that it actually hurts you.

Instead, gauge your limit, and be sure to stretch – but not overstretch. Overstretching to the
point where it is painful can actually cause muscle tears, which are the last things that you want
during a pregnancy!

Also, when you’re stretching you should be doing so in slow and measured motions. Don’t
‘bounce’ or ‘jerk’ your motion – that would defeat the whole point.

For ideas of the exact stretches that you should be using, just refer to the many online and
offline resources on the topic.

Some people tend to include a quick, slow paced cardiovascular exercise in their warm up
stage, just to get the blood flowing. This isn’t entirely necessary, but it isn’t harmful either, and
could help bridge the gap between your warm up stage and your free pregnancy exercises proper.

End of the day, it is largely a question of preference.