Importance of Exercise Warm Up

Hello again people, this time I'm here to share my short story on exercising, whether it be a jog/run, gym, combat sport etc. For me I currently go to Jetts gym as it is more beneficial for me in terms of access and money, I use to do Muay Thai kickboxing and a bit of boxing as I had grown up around a lot of martial arts philosophy and movies.

The other day I went to the gym during peak how, due to the amount of people there, equipment was limited. My main focus that day was back, and normally I like to start my back workout with deadlifts as they are a pain to do at the end of all your workouts. Normally I would start off with the lightest weight on the rack to warm up my back as I slowly progress through each weight, I do 8 reps per weight/set, but due to the peak traffic I was unable to start off light and move up, because of the limited time I had to stay at the gym I just decided to grab whatever weight I could, which was only 40 Kg at the time. I proceeded to do my deadlifts as normal except starting off at the heavier weight and no warm up, into my second set I felt my hamstring twitch on my right leg, but I continued with the set and finished at about 4 sets. I continue with my other exercises where I went to do my upper back on the chin up bar and then proceed to the machine to finish off my workout of the day.

The next day I went to visit my girlfriend and was laying stomach faced down on the bed, and at this point my girlfriend says "what the hell is that, does it hurt?" I was confused and questioned her as to what she was on about, only to realised the twitch I had felt I'm my hamstring had turned into a bruise, this could've been from a burst inside where it is now forming a blood clot as there is a lump there now.

I will have the picture below to show you what it looks like.

The picture may not show how bad the bruise is but as the days pass, the bruise got bigger. After this it has taught me to properly warm up before an exercise despite what it may be, as it is better to be safe than to risk it due to a temporary obstacle, please give yourself a good amount of time to  warm up and stretch to prevent your body from injuries, luckily mine is not severe as I've experienced a lot worse when I was training Muay Thai.

I hope this was helpful to some people, please like and share

Anthony Liang