We’ve all done it at some point or another: We think we can save precious time by jumping right into our workout without warming up first and then, once we’ve finished, count our post-workout shower as a cooldown. After all, we’re too busy to bother, right?
Wrong.
If you want to get an effective workout, you need to take some time to prepare your body for the work and then cool it down once the workout is over.
Still, you may be wondering: Do I really need to do both? Can’t I just prioritize one over the other and save some time?
Two experts weigh-in.
“Both [the warmup and the cooldown] are really underrated,” says Michael Piercy, MS, certified strength and conditioning specialist, IDEA personal trainer of the year 2017 and owner of The LAB in Fairfield, New Jersey. “I wouldn’t be able to get one precedence over the other.”
That said, the warmup may be slightly more important, especially as far as injury prevention is concerned.