My Favorite Warm Up

A complete warm up before exercise is one of the best ways to prevent injury risk and improve sports performance, but few recreational athletes actually take the time to do a complete and proper warm up. If you skip warming up, give my favorite warm up a try and you might add it to the beginning of every workout. This awesome warm up was posted by Lauren B, a Personal Trainer from Australia and professional volleyball player. It turns out that her favorite warm up is also my new favorite warm up. Thanks, Lauren!

My Favorite Warm Up (Video by Lauren B.)

1. Jog- Simple, jog up and down twice.
2. Knee to Chest- Walk, pull your knee to your chest and come up on your toes
3. Butt Sits- Ankle to knee, and sit down, hold it for one second. Concentrate on actually sitting.
4. Hamstring Walk- Simple dynamic stretch for your hamstring
5. Quad Walk- Simple dynamic stretch for your quads, try and jerk slightly at the end like I do to get that stretch
6. Side Step- Just to keep things moving, although the jog back should do that just fine.
7. Lunge to instep- Take your elbow to your instep, great stretch for almost everything
8. ITB Walk- Dynamic stretch that targets your ITB and the side of your butt, the foot that is in front is the side that you go. I did one the wrong way!
9. High kicks- Simple high kicks for your hammies.
10. Skip with Arm Swings- Just something for your arms.
11. Hip Overs- Taking your foot over something imaginary, skip in between.
12. Skips- Pretend there is a bar coming out of your ankle and skip over it, fast.
13. Lunges- Put your arms in the air to get that fascia stretch.
14. High Skips- Same as skips but very high, use more power, you’ll be warm by now.

_{David Beckham Warms Up
Photo (c) Phil Cole / Getty Images}