Do you warm up before you practise? A warm up when you’re training alone is one of those things that’s so easy to forget about. It’s something that we all know we should do but actually doing it when there’s so many amazing moves we really want to try. . . . . well, it’s tempting to miss it out and just jump straight on!
When you spend some time warming up you’re preparing your mind and body for exercise. A few benefits to a good warm up are:
- Reduce risk of injury
- Increase blood flow so you won’t become out of breath as quickly
- Increased blood flow will make your muscles more pliable (flexible moves will feel easier!)
- Increase your concentration and help focus on the exercise you’re doing
- Reduced muscle soreness the next day
- A warm body and pole will improve your skin grip
- Improved hand and foot grip on the silks
- The painful moves will hurt less!
You should warm up gradually and it doesn’t have to be complicated. The first half of my warm up is an aerobic routine then the second half is done on the equipment I’m practising on that day. My warm up’s generally last 10-15 minutes, depending on how cold it is! As we work our upper body a lot it’s important to make sure our upper body gets really warmed up, I do this by making sure my arms are included in every movement.
I start off in my jumper, joggers and trainers or uggs, I’m quite a cold person so I don’t like to strip off straight away! First do an aerobic routine, to begin with I do some hip circles, torso twists, elbow to knee type moves, then I increase the movements with some grapevines and walking punches. I then increase the intensity some more by doing some star jumps, jumping squats and jogging on the spot. This usually takes 5-10 minutes and it’s so simple!
Pole
By now I gradually start to take off some layers. If I’m training pole I’ll put on a really good song and just dance to it, no tricks allowed! Most of my students seem to hate doing this but I love it! It really gets your mind focused on the pole and lets it become more grippy without touching the cold metal too much! I’ll then do another song of just basic 2 handed spins, by this point the joggers have usually come off and I’ll finish up with a few climbs.
Silks
If I’m training silks I’ll do about 3 French climbs, 3 Russian climbs and 3 aerial climbs. There’s no need to do fancy moves in a warm up and climbing the silks definitely gets the blood pumping! Check out my favourite Aerial Silks Climbs.
Hoop
If I’m training hoop I’ll go start off with some straddles and pikes, then up into the hoop and I do a couple of really simple combinations, things that I don’t have to think about and get me back into the mindset of being spinning around in the air and helps me become balanced before I do anything harder.
Now I’m warm, feel grippy and ready to have a really good training session!
What do you do in your warm ups? xx
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