Practice gets your brain and body to work together while improving your performance.
Although you should practice regularly, don't overdo it. Sudden increases in training frequency, duration, or intensity might produce better performance at first but can lead to injuries later
10 things why we should warm up!
Increased elasticity of the muscle.
This allows greater flexibility of the joints and reduces the risk of injury. Muscle elasticity is dependent upon blood saturation; therefore cold muscles with a low blood saturation are more susceptible to injury or damage. Think of muscle being like a blob of Blu-tack. When Blu-tack is cold you can stretch it so far and then it will snap. But when Blu-tack is warm you can stretch and stretch it and it feels gooey. So it is with your muscles - it is simply the warm blood rushing through the muscle that warms it up on the way past and makes the muscle fibres more elastic.
Breathing becomes faster and deeper.
This allows more oxygen to be breathed in and more carbon dioxide breathed out.
A rise in the heart rate.
This delivers more oxygen and glucose to the muscles for energy production.
A rise in the internal body temperature.
Capillaries in the skin will dilate (open up) and you will start sweating as the intensity of exercise starts to increase.
More efficient transmission of signals along motor nerves.
This allows quicker and smoother muscle contractions, so the muscles can react in a more co-ordinated manner.
Improved proprioception.
There is a greater awareness of joint and muscle positions and movements due to improved transmission of feedback messages along the sensory nerves.
Time to focus.
the dancer can concentrate on the exercise to follow, and if less distracted then is less likely to have an accident.
Increased joint range of movement.
This is due to an increase in the extensibility of the tendons, muscles, ligaments and other connective tissues.
Change from a relaxed body to an active body The body moves from a state of relative rest to one of activity.
Redistribution of blood.
Blood is diverted away from some areas of the body (e.g. gut) and into other areas (e.g. muscles and skin). Release of energy fuel from storage. That is, the conversion of glycogen to glucose by the hormone glucagons.
How we can warm up! A warm-up is necessary no matter how warm the environment. All the above benefits can be obtained by a warm-up routine that should include the following in this order:
• Gentle jogging, marching, skipping or similar rhythmical activity.
• Exercises of a steady rhythmical nature involving other joints of the body, such as gentle knee bends, arm swings, sways, trunk rotation, step ball change. None of these should reach end of range of movement at this stage so muscles and joints are not overstretched. Incorporating arm movements at this stage will accelerate the effects of the warm-up.
• Gentle stretches to the large muscle groups, holding each stretch for 10-15 seconds.