Many articles, books, lectures, as well as trainers draw attention to the importance and vital role of warming up at the beginning of training sessions. Even though everyone is up fed up with this piece of good advice, sports persons in numerous instances still tend to neglect warming up at the beginning of the training session.
You need to warm-up more than you usually do when engaging in more physically and psychologically demanding sporting activities. Such special additional warm-up exercises are generally individual. They depend on how long the race is or how demanding the training is, but even more on the current fitness and state of the nervous system of the runner.
If you happen to decide from one day to the next that sports is missing from your life and you urgently intend to change this, you have made one of the best decisions in your life. However, you need to know that although you have definitely committed yourself, your muscles are by no way ready to take the strain.
Skeletal muscle injuries are the most common sports injuries, accounting for 30-40% of sports injuries. Skeletal muscles account for 40-45% of our body weight. Skeletal muscles are supplied with veins, arteries and nerves, either of which may suffer injury. There are several types of injuries. Bruises, sprains and tears are the most common ones.
Most sports persons agree that massaging relieves pain and facilitates regeneration, which has also been scientifically proven. At a cellular level, massaging reduces inflammation and helps trigger the growth of new mitochondria in skeletal muscle cells.
The two main types of methods used widely today, i.e., classical and reflex zone massage originate from massage techniques used in antiquity. Today's sports massage is fundamentally composed of five basic techniques, namely: vibration, stroking, kneading, rubbing and percussion, the combination of which form the massage programme.
This is a topic we hear very little about. After an evening jog, we return home or to the car, get in and that's the end of training. Exhausted muscles considerably contract by the end of training, which is why they need to be stretched for these muscles to regenerate faster, reduce their fragility and last, but not least to prepare them for the next training.
