In their quest to build muscle fast and just hit the weights, most body builders over look one of the most important aspects of building muscle. Warming up.

You will have a much more effective workout when you take the time to warm up properly. The two main reasons why you should warm up are

a) It increases the amount of weight your body can handle.

2. Reduces the risk of injury to your joints and muscles.

I recommend structuring your warm up into three mini-parts. Trust me, it is a lot less work than it sounds. First you should do a light cardio exercise on either the treadmill or any of the other cardio machines. Stairmaster and cycle machines are fine too. The cardio should be light so that you do not burn energy that is best used for making your workout as intense as possible. 5 minutes at 3.5 miles/hr works great.

This stimulates your heart and lungs and triggers the secretion of synovial fluid which lubricates your joints. Synovial fluid is a viscous egg-yolk-like fluid that sits between your joints. It helps reduce friction during moment.

After you complete cardio, next you will want to stretch thoroughly. Don’t simply go through the motions and breeze through this. Make sure you feel a little tension in the muscle but no pressure on the joints. There are wrong and right ways to stretch and the proper form is illustrated in the link below. Stretching is often overlooked by most body builders but can make a significant difference in how great your workout will be.

Once you complete the stretches use light weights to exercise your target muscle groups. This is the third and final part of the warm up phase. It is not necessary to do this for all the muscles-just the ones you will be hitting that day. If you’ll be doing chest and back, do chest and back exercise with extremely low poundages and several repetitions.

With each part taking about 5 minutes you can complete the entire warm up phase in about fifteen minutes. Your goal should always be to do short intense workouts and spend as little time as possible in the gym. In total try and get in and out of the gym in less than 90 minutes. 15 minutes for warm up and roughly an hour of intense workout. Use the time you do cardio to mentally prepare for the intense workout.

A practice I found useful in my ’skinny nerd’ days was to perform vivid mental visualizations of the body I wanted to attain. I did this while doing cardio since cardio can be mind numbing. It helped me focus and have more intense workouts and it can help you too. Most successful body builders and sports stars will tell you that visualization is for real and contributed immensely to their success.

In closing, don’t be like those muscle heads who storm into the gym and begin lifting weights immediately. They are the ones who usually have nagging injuries. Warm up and your body will thank you.

Don is the creator of a fitness newsletter that goes out to thousands of readers each week. Claim your FREE Muscle Building Course. Also Learn Proper Men’s Workout Form. http://www.MensWorkoutHeaven.com