Principle
A warm up has to be complete, progressive and structured. It may have a general phase and an activity-specific phase. For example, improve your coordination and movement control, reduce your reaction time.
Goal
The aim of the warm-up is to prepare the body, mentally and physically, to perform a specific task. It increases body temperature, optimizes performance and reduces the risk of injury.
It plays a vital role before starting a workout, by increasing the volume of blood flowing to the muscles, thus improving the supply of oxygen and energy substrates.
It also increases the point of physical and neurological activation. As a result, the body will be able to contract muscles more rapidly and improve the efficiency of the contraction-relaxation cycle of agonist-antagonist muscles during exercise.
Finally, a warm-up helps to develop better elasticity in muscle tissue, giving you a better functional range of motion to perform an activity.
Warming up also stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system increases heart rate, speeds up breathing while making it shallower, dilates the pupils and stimulates the metabolism. Conversely, the parasympathetic nervous system has a calming effect on the body.
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