My weekly workout routine includes an hour and a half of aggressive racquetball twice weekly, and 30 minutes of stairmaster/elliptical followed by a weight workout two to three times weekly. My resting heart rate is around 52 beats per minute and I'm 45 years old. My issue is that starting out feels tough, with wind coming hard and my body generally dragging -- I guess I'm a slow starter. Once I'm cranked up and breaking a sweat after, say, eight to ten minutes, I feel gradually better and better through the workout. Any suggestions on how to get out of the gate better?

— Kevin Slattery, Albany, New York

For thousands of years humans have faced the disadvantages associated with a physiological system that takes some time to get going. Gone are the days when we ran to save our lives or to chase dinner -- now we exercise because it's good for us. Unfortunately, we still don't have a very effective means of jumping into intense exercise and feeling terrific right off the bat. Part of the blame can be placed on temperature. Our muscle cells don't produce as much energy when they are cold, so we have to recruit more muscle cells early on, which leads to heavy breathing and the sensation that our extremities are made of lead. Muscle contractions produce energy and give off a lot of heat, so as we exercise the cells heat up, increase their metabolic rates, get more oxygen from the blood, and, presto! You're off and running (or cycling or skiing or...).

Unfortunately, there's no way to get to the performance state straight out of the gate without passing through the sluggish warmup

To get the most from your workouts, especially if they are aerobic and of moderate to high intensity, take some time to warm-up slowly-- there just isn't any magic way to get your muscles to jump straight from cold and bootless to hot and high-performance. So rather than going full force in the beginning, which leads to the sluggishness you've experienced, take that first five to ten minutes and gradually increase the intensity, or do another warm-up activity, like walking, cycling, or rowing, before jumping into your primary mode of exercise. The warm-up period is also a great opportunity to remind yourself of why you're doing what you're doing, so that if you are struggling during the session you have a chance of remembering why you're there, which might keep you going. It's also a perfect time to work on technique, perhaps a few practice swings or some light stretches as you begin to move. Your other option is to do a passive warm-up, such as taking a sauna, hot shower, or hot tub. It will serve to increase your body temperature, but if you're like me, the last thing you feel like doing after sitting in a hot tub is working out.