I have recently read an interesting post about a discussion regarding warming up before a workout and what it should consist of.

A warm up should be about preparing your body for the exercise that you are about to do. Mobilising your joints and gradually increasing your heart rate to workout level without going anaerobic. Ideally the movements that you do in your warm up should mimic the movements that you are going to be doing in your workout.

With the development of the 30 min HIIT training classes the warm up idea seems to have been diluted and it is now becoming part of the workout, becoming to intense too soon to include burpees, push ups, sprinting etc.

What you need to consider is if you are doing these types of explosive exercises on cold muscles then you are asking for the muscles and tendons to go ping and cause an injury. 

Think of it like this. Do you think that Usain Bolt goes straight from the dressing room to the track without a warm up? This is the same principle of going straight into a HIIT session.

A warm up should include a mobility section where you loosen the joints and taking them through their full range of movement, a pulse raising section where you increase the heart rate but are still working aerobically and some stretching of the main muscles that you are going to be using. These can be done dynamically or static.

A warm up is an important part of the session and shouldn’t be forgotten about or become part of the workout.