Warm Up, stretching and using target heart rate in circuit training

GCSE Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

Warm Up

Warming up is very important part of exercise. We need to do this to gradually raise the body’s temperature and heart rate. This improves the exchanging of oxygen from haemoglobin, warms up the muscles, warms and loosens joints. The whole point of warming up is to prepare you for the main activity.

The three main reasons for warming up are:

To prevent injury, when more blood is running through the body you are less likely to get injured.
To improve performance, like stretching for more flexibility.
To prepare psychologically for the event, like mobility work.

Cardiovascular means working of the heart and blood vessels. This is the first part of the warm up and basically we get the heart working harder than normal (raising heart rate) to get blood pumping around the body and prepare for the next phase of the warm up. We can do this in various ways, running, skipping, cycling ECT. If I’m indoors, I will skip as there will not be that much space, but if I’m outside I will run. My warm up will vary depending on what training I will be doing. If I’m doing continuous training, my warm up won’t be too strenuous as it would with circuit training.

The next phase of warming up is stretching. The muscles I will need for basketball are my leg muscles (Gastrocnemiuis, Quadriceps, hamstrings) and arm muscles (Triceps). If I’m doing continuous training, I won’t need to stretch all these muscles as hard as I won’t be using all of them.

Tips for stretching

The aims of stretching are to gently lengthen muscles before and after exercise, and to improve tissue elasticity.

Star off with gradual mobility exercises of all joints, like rotating wrists, bend your arms, rolling shoulders. This helps the body’s natural lubrication (synovial fluid) to protect the surface of your bones at these joints.
Always warm up your body prior to stretching because this makes the muscles suppler.
Stop immediately if you feel severe pain
Remember, breathe regularly and rhythmically, don’t hold your breath.
Start with your legs, and work up the body, in order not to miss out any stretch.
Never bounce stretch unless you’re doing ballistic stretches for a specific sport like martial arts.

Here are the stretches I will be doing:

There are other ways also in which you can stretch your muscles.

The last phase of the warm up is the mobility work. For this I will practise a couple of lay-ups, jump shots and do a bit of dribbling up and down the court. I don’t think mobility work is necessary for fitness training as I won’t be preparing for a game of basketball but you can do this if you want to.

...