Before I go any further, I think everyone should be aware of the purpose of a warm-up and the rational behind it. While warming up and stretching are designed to reduce injury, stretching is not warming up. The warm-up routine helps pump oxygen-rich blood into the muscles while also increasing the temperature of the muscles. For this reason, a warm-up should always be done before stretching takes place.
The best way of explaining the importance of warming up first is the rubber band analogy. If you take a rubber band and place it in a refrigerator it becomes cold. Your muscles are also "cold," in a sense, before you begin working out. If you take that rubber band out and immediately start stretching it over and over you notice it doesn't have much elasticity and is more likely to pop or break. However, if you were to stretch that rubber band when it was not cold it is more pliable. In like sense, stretching and moving your muscles while they are "cold" makes them more prone to tears and pulls. Therefore, warming up helps prepare for stretching. Warming up also provides other benefits, such as:
1. Increasing the temperature of the muscles used in the warm-up thus allowing them to contract more forcefully and relax more quickly than a muscle not warmed up.
2. Increasing the temperature of the muscles used in the warm-up also decreases the risk of overstretching and
injuring the muscles.
3. Increasing movement of blood through your body's tissues thus increasing the muscles' elasticity.
4. Increasing delivery of oxygen and nutrients to your muscles preventing you from getting out of breath early or too easily during a workout or event.
5. Dilating the blood vessels thus preventing a rapid increase in blood pressure, which could be dangerous, while preparing your heart for an increase in activity.
5. Preparing your body's cooling efficiency by activating your body's heat-dissipation mechanisms, better known as
sweating, which prevents the body from overheating during the workout or event.
6. Increasing blood temperature allowing the binding of oxygen to hemoglobin to break more easily, making it more readily available to muscles, thus increasing endurance.
7. Priming your nerve-to-muscle pathways to be ready for the upcoming workout or event.
8. Causing hormonal changes responsible for making carbohydrates and fatty acids more readily available in energy production.
