Warm-up

Why you need it?

Best practice dictates that any training session should start with a warm-up.

The reasons for this are many. A warm-up not only prepares the athlete for the activity to come – but the physiological effect and body’s production of adrenalin, increases the heart rate and dilates capillaries, it also increases the temperature of the body as a whole.

This increase in body temperature results in increased elasticity of the muscles- thereby reducing the potential incidence of injury


positive functions

  • Avoidance / minimization of injury,
  • Improving performance, through body and mental preparedness.
  • Increasing flexibility and elasticity
  • Familiarization of the Ergometer and its exercise action

How long?

A pre-warm-up can be undertaken prior to getting onto the Ergometer- with the goal to gently raise the heart rate, ready for activity. This can be achieved through gentle jogging, perhaps some interactive ball games, skipping.

The pre-Warm- up should be carried out for about approx. 5 minutes, followed by some gentle stretching exercises.
Stretches should be all-over stretches, taking care to stretch muscles throughout the whole body not just the arms!….This can then be transitioned to some kayak specific warm-up activity on the Ergometer.

the training or event activity, the longer the time that should be taken for warm-up. Once on the Ergometer the kayak specific the warm-up – could consist of say 3- 4 minutes of gentle paddling at low intensity and then transitioning to say 30 strokes, 40 strokes and 50 stokes [counting each side] of progressively increasing intensity “surges”, These surges can be followed by a gentle free-wheeling period of say 2 minutes gentle paddling between each increase in frequency.

This can be repeated several times in order to achieve the level of warm up that is desired by the athlete.
Total Ergometer warm up time should be approx.15 minutes.