Okay, we’ve all heard about “rolling out” by now, and seen people contorting themselves over pieces of foam and balls, but why bother? Well, often a weak muscle is a tight muscle, and movement patterns can become compromised because the tight muscle needs to relax a bit before it can even stretch properly, let alone get strengthened.

All right, so you’ve wrapped your head around your upcoming workout, you’ve done any rehab or “prehab” that may have been prescribed to you. Time to get the muscles moving and the joints lubricated before bringing up the work level. Keep everything underneath the level of pain; just nudge your body to expand its range of motion slightly while staying relaxed.

Hands down, the best acute injury prevention bang for your buck is a proper warmup; the older you get, the longer your warmup needs to be. My personal rule of thumb is that for every birthday that ends with a zero, you have to add another 5 minutes to your warmup.