Daily tip #25| Warming up

Warming up before exercising is essential, no matter the complexity of the exercise. Everybody knows you need to warm up, but not everyone does it long enough to actually properly warm up, so let me teach you how to.



Then again, lets see what warming up is defined by. Warming up basically raising your body temperature. Why would you want to do that? Increasing your body temperature allows your muscles to flex and stretch more, obviously, since cold muscles don't like to move freely. Your tendons, ligaments and cartilage also increase in flexibility, leading to a lesser risk of injuries, strains and tears.


The warm up movements also help activate the fluids in your joints, reducing their friction and wear. Which is obviously great as you get older! After warming up your heart can properly adjust to the tempo and regulate blood easier. Sudden exercise can lead to many injuries and a heart attack.


A good enough warm up should get your heart pumping and a little bit of sweat. A basic warm up would be walking slightly faster than average for 10 minutes before jogging. Your heart will be ready to accept the need for blood and nourishments of your muscles.

Warming up reduces pre-mature fatigue, maybe you haven't been warming up properly and you're a better runner than you think? It also enables you to get the most benefits out of a workout.


The lenght of the warm up should be dictated by the intensity of the following exercise. As I said, average jogging should be prepared for with 10 minutes of walking slightly faster than average. Don't have the time to warm up? Get ready for severe injuries and a heart attack. Cold muscles do not want to stretch and work.

If you're interested in my warm up - it would take quite a while to write it all down. But it takes just around 15 minutes, consisting many different ways to warm up, like Jumping Jacks, Scorpions, Trunk Twists, Clap push-ups, Lat pulldowns and so on and on. I do 18 different exercises to warm up, so as you can see it can get quite complex. There are also ways to fix your muscle anatomy with warming up in specific ways before a workout.


Always make sure to properly warm up before exercise, as it can increase your results, help the recovery be more bearable ( keep in mind pain is not the only indicator of a good workout ) and prevent injury.


If you have no idea how to start running, here's a basic week:

Drink a lot of water, do not underestimate sleeping properly, stop making common mistakes and you'll be much happier!

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Daily tip #8| Water

Water. Have you ever thought about how useful water is? Probably not, since you use and drink it every day, it seems to be taken for granted.

I can't strees enough how important water really is to you. Your water needs depend on many things, your health, how active you are, and how much and what you eat.

No single formula truly fits everyone. Though, knowing more about your body's need for fluids will help give you an idea of how much water you need to drink daily.

Okay, before jumping into your daily water intake, lets start with 'why?' to intake it. Water makes up about 60 percent of your body weight. That's more than half of you! Every single system in your body depends on water. Water is great. It helps remove toxins out of your organs, it regulates your body temperature, it carries nutrients to your cells and it moists up your ear, nose and throat tissues.Water also protects your joints and organs. . Blood is mostly water, and your muscles, lungs, and brain all contain a lot of water.

Water water water. It's more than a half of you, and there's still such a thing as dehydration? Sounds a bit silly, doesn't it?

You lose water through urination, respiration, you lose close to an additional liter of water a day through breathing, and if you are very active, sweating.. Caffeine pills and alcohol, result in the need to drink more water because this makes you lose a lot of fluids. Symptoms dehydration ( mild)  include pains in joints and muscles (after a good work out this doesn't apply), lower back pain, headaches and constipation. A strong odor to your urine ( yep, stronger than normal ), along with a yellow or amber-like color, means that you might not be getting enough water. Note that riboflavin, a B vitamin, will make your urine bright yellow. Some medications can alter the colour too.

Now, how much water do you need? About twenty percent of the water you need comes from the food you eat. The rest will come from drinks. Water is probably the best choice, obviously, because sodas have sugar and calories, which if you were to drink the daily norm of water with soda, you're way better off eating two or three chicken breasts and actually gaining high quality protein, rather than empty 'soda' calories.

A little over two liters of of water a day ,together with water from your normal diet, will typically replace your lost water. The Institute of Medicine advises that men consume about 3 liters (13 cups) of total beverages a day and women consume 2.2 liters (about 9 cups) of total drinks a day.

You should make sure to have a bottle of water with you no matter where you are, at work, camping, driving a car, exercising. Water does sound a bit unexciting, and I bet you'll get bored soon. To fix that, you can add a little flavour to it, some lemon maybe. You can experiment, but make sure to watch for calories, you don't want to drink a lot of them, start gaining weight and not realise why you're gaining weight if your diet is the same.

In the end, the biggest indicator of the need for water is thirst. It's there for a reason afterall, isn't it?

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