Martial Science

Warming up serves a number of purposes, I’m going to look more closely at two of them.  I split my classes warm up into two parts, each one specifically designed to target one of the purposes for the warm up.

Warm up part 1 – Increased Heart Rate.

Getting your heart rate up increases the amount of blood flowing through your circulatory system. As you undoubtedly know, blood carries nutrients and oxygen to cells and removes waste products and so increasing the rate at which it is flowing increases the rate at which these essentials are delivered to the cells that need them as well as increasing the rate at which potentially damaging waste products such as CO2 and lactic acid are removed. If you force muscles to work harder without first providing them with increased levels of the chemicals they require to do so you dramatically increase the likelihood of injuring those muscles. If you keep stressing a muscle without increasing the speed at which it is able to lose the damaging chemicals it produces when stressed you increase the likelihood of injuring those muscles.

With this in mind every good warm up should start with aerobic exercise (if it gets you out of breath it is aerobic). By the end of it you should be out of breath and your pulse should be raised. Once you have done this you are ready for stage two of your warm up.  Incidentally, we run.  Backwards and forwards across the hall, stopping to do simple exercises such as ab crunches followed by more running.

Warm up part 2 – Joint Movement

If a joint is able to move it is known as a synovial joint. On a basic level this means that within the joint is a substance known as synovial fluid. Much like blood synovial fluid serves as a means of providing nutrients to, and removing waste products from the cartilage inside the joint capsule. It also acts as a hydrolic shock absorber for the joint.

Synovial fluid is not a standard liquid however. It is a Non-Newtonian Thixotropic Liquid.

In a nutshell this basically means that at rest it behaves like a solid, but when subject to stresses it becomes more liquid. A tragic example of a thixotropic liquid in action was the Aberfan disaster when a slag heap collapsed in 1966 destrying a school  (I’ll leave you to look that one up). This means that in order to effectively cushion the joint and deliver the nutrients the cartilage needs the synovial fluid should be as liquid as it is possible to get it. This can be achieved by simply running the appropriate joints through range of motion exercises. You do not need to actively force the joints to their limits, just get them moving.

It is important to realise that both heart rate, and synovial fluid viscosity will return to their resting state if not kept up. This means that if you stop exercising for a few minutes you should put yourself through a mini warm up before starting again.

I cant promise that you won’t get injured if you follow these simple guidelines, but I can promise that you will drastically reduce the chances of it happening.