A warm up is an essential part of any good workout, but it can also play a bigger role in your motivation and how hard you can safely push yourself during your actual workout.

Warm ups, aside from prepping your body and muscles for the activity ahead, can also serve as motivation to get you moving in the first place. A true test of whether or not you should skip your workout for the day, can be doing the warm up. After you’ve moved around a bit - do you still feel like you need rest more than activity, and/or do you feel like you can keep going and push yourself a little further, by doing the actual workout? Please note that this is not a rhetorical question but an honest one that you should ask yourself and consider carefully before moving onto either a rest day or a full workout.

A good warm up mimics the movements that you will do later in your actual workout. Keep in mind that if you feel like you might benefit from a longer duration workout, you should definitely treat yourself to extending the amount of time you spend gradually raising your heart rate and allowing your muscles a chance to get warm. This can be especially helpful for people with injuries, asthma, arthritis, etc. 

Workout Structure
Light total body exercises that gradually become more intense; ideal for cardio warm up or midday energy boost
30 Seconds each interval 
No equipment necessary

Printable Cardio Warm Up Workout - 30 Seconds each interval
Boxer Shuffle
Warrior Steps
IT Band Steps
Warrior Jacks
3 Twists + Knee
Standing Jackknife
Good Morning
Squat Push Pull
Walkdown
Reverse Lunge
Forward Lunge
Lateral Jumps
Butt Kickers
Squat + Jump Squat Combo

Do you always include a warm up before your main workout? Have you ever found motivation for the rest of your workout, in the middle of a warm up? Or have you had the experience of giving the warm up a try, and deciding that rest was the better option? We always advocate for listening to your body - use the comment section to tell us what that means to you.