When ever you prepare to use your oven one of the most important steps is to pre-heat it first so it operates properly. Another situation is starting your car early to warm it up during the winter months. Well, your muscles are no different.

NOTE: Before beginning any exercise routine you should consult your health professional. This will limit the chance of injury or other health issues that might be brought on due to strenuous activity.

Warm-up exercises do not need to be overly strenuous or time consuming, but they are very important. The main point of these exercises are to stretch and limber up muscles prior to putting them to work. As with many other things, the muscles in your body have various stages of readiness. A prime example is when you wake up in the morning. When you first wake up your muscles are in the same condition. They will be tight, stiff, and slow to respond. Should you jump straight into an exercise program at this point it would be safe to say that the likelihood of injury is very high.

However, there are some warm-up exercises that not only limit the possibility of injury, but also take only a few moments to complete. The primary purpose of the warm-up exercises is to get the blood and oxygen levels up in the muscles to help them function at peak performance.

The main warm up exercises I do myself primarily consist of stretching the various muscle groups. I try to stretch all of the various muscle groups to limber them up regardless of how big a role they might play in the main exercise program. So, let's get started with some of the stretches that really work well for loosening you up.

A good stretching exercise for your neck muscles is the raised arm neck turn. I guess that's the name. This is one of the exercises we did in the Army and it really felt good afterwards.

1) Standing with your feet about shoulders width apart, raise your arms until level with your shoulders, with your palms up. Now, facing forward as a start point, slowly turn your head, and only your head, as far to one side until you feel the stiff tightness. Hold and count to 10. Then you slowly return to the start point and repeat to the other side. Repeat the exercise 5-8 times for each side and you should be able to turn a little further each time.

The main points I tend to focus on are my legs. Since I had back surgery my legs tend to get very "heavy", which is why I tend to do these stretches 2 or more times throughout the day. For this next exercise

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