A Thinking Man's Guide To The Warm Up Part II

Earlier this year (snickering behind my hand) I blogged about what the real purpose of warming up is.  Very literally warming up the muscles so they are soft enough to move with force yet activated enough to respond to it FASTER than the speed of thought.

My questions for you at this point is, when we move, when we exercise, are the muscles the only things that move? What do the muscles move? And WHERE does the movement actually take place.

Think on that.  Yes I am going to give you the answer and yes if you don’t already know it then you are gonna go duh, but I do want you do really think about it.  Make your brain itch just a bit and when we scratch it, it will be all that much better.

Okay enough of the filler.

Bones are moved by the muscles, and movement actually takes place at the joints.

Okay if any of you actually said Duh or Doipe I am sorry and I hope you did not smack your forehead to hard.

Now, what has that to do with warming up?

Remember what I said about getting the muscles more loose and fluid.  The key word here is fluid.  In the case of the joints we are literally talking about fluid (as opposed to fluid like).


Synovial fluid is produced at the joint capsule as a result of movement; it has a lubricating effect, helping the bones slide around more easily where they meet at the joint.  Going back to my car/oil metaphor, do you want to be driving around with low oil?  What’s good for the pistons is good for the joints (bet you never heard that variation before).

There is a LITTLE BIT more to the story, but I will save that for part III of warm up, later this same year but I will leave you with this.

                                                     MOVE YOUR JOINTS.

And also a question…

How many angles and degrees do your joints move in?

I look forward to your questions and comments.

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