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The Right Warm Up for Every Workout
Sep
Do you really need to warm up for every workout? The answer, in short, is yes., you need to warm up for every workout. Here’s why…
What’s your pre workout warm up routine? Does it consist of tying your shoes, filling up your water bottle and swinging your arms back and forth across your chest as you head to the squat rack?
Yes?
You’re not alone.
I’ll be honest, the warm up is not the most fun, most badass, or most obviously effective piece of your gym routine. But a good warm up can make the rest of your workout more fun, more badass and exponentially more effective.
The first question is…why?
Why You Should Warm Up for Every Workout
A good warm up can make the rest of your workout more fun, more badass and exponentially more effective.
Julia Hale Fitness
When you warm up prior to working out, you are preparing your body to face an elevated challenge in a number of ways.
- Elevate your muscle and body temperature. As your body temperature rises during your warm up, the tissues surrounding your joints – ankles, knees, hips, shoulders – loosen. Your muscles start to warm up, become more flexible and more efficient in their movement patterns. This allows for a greater range of motion, giving you more bang for your buck with each rep and reduces your risk of injury.
- Boost oxygen in the muscles. A good warm up increases blood flow to the muscles, supplying them with greater blood flow and increasing the availability of oxygen within. The more oxygen available, the easier it is for your muscle to contract and relax – making big lifts and hard workouts easier and more effective.
- Mentally prepare. Your warm up gives you time, space and incentive to pull your focus into your own self and body. How many times have you left work to hit the gym and realized your mind was still lingering back at your desk? A good warm up wakes up your muscles and gives you the opportunity to switch gears mentally.
- Increase mobility. If flexibility is 1D, think of mobility as 3D. Mobility is the ability to move a joint through a fuller and fuller range of motion, where the muscles and tendons are not only lengthening but are functional in that space. The importance of this becomes obvious when given an example.
Think about performing a barbell squat. The load is on your shoulders, forcing you to engage your lats, core, lower back and arms before you even think about the lower body mechanics. Once you do start to perform the squat movement itself, you’re adding in ankle, knee and hip stability and mobility, as well as the obvious leg and glute strength. The more mobile you are, the deeper you can get into that squat. The deeper you get, the more muscles engage to help you complete the movement – increasing the potential strength and performance value of each and every rep while simultaneously reducing your risk of injury.
The Right Warm Up for Every Workout
A great warm up should last roughly 10 minutes. Enough time to prime the muscles but not enough time to fatigue them. There are a few key elements:
The Aerobic Warm Up
This is the general warm up that most of us think about when we think pre workout. Your aerobic warm up consists of about 5 minutes of light cardio, like walking, jogging, row machine or bicycling. This isn’t frantic, high intensity cardio. This is gentle, low impact movement that just breaks a sweat.
Mobility Work
Pre-workout, I highly recommend including as much total body mobility as you can. Even if you are planning on a very specific muscle group split you still want to make sure your entire body is ready to move. That’s especially true if you are planning on lifting heavy during your workout. No barbell exercise or heavy lift that I’ve ever encountered is truly isolated.
This 5-Minute Mobility Flow is a great place to start!
Dynamic Stretching
When it comes to preworkout stretching, keep in mind that while you are in the process of warming up your muscles, they are not completely warmed up yet.
The closest analogy I can use to explain this is an elastic band. A cold elastic band will only stretch so far before you start to see cracks in the material. And then it snaps. A warm elastic band can stretch much further without damaging the structure.
The same goes for your muscles. Which is why dynamic stretching – a movement based type of stretching – is perfect for your warm up (as opposed to static stretches and holds).
Dynamic stretches typically mimic the exercise you are preparing from. For example a swimmer might do arm circles, or you might do leg swings and moving toe touches before you deadlift. This kind of moving stretch continues to warm up your muscles and increase your range of motion. They also prime your muscles and joints for specific movement patterns, without force or added tension.
Warm Up Set
Of all of these elements, the warm up set is probably one you do without even knowing it. It’s that body weight or bench squat before barbell squats, that light shoulder raise before heavy presses, that light jog before running a race.
Your warm up set(s) mimics the working set you are about to do, albeit with less added weight or tension. The idea behind this warm up set is to acclimate your muscles to what is to come. Warm up sets introduce movement patterns and engage the appropriate muscles so they’re ready to rock as you add weight. A single warm up set is usually all you need before a big lift.
Bonus: SMR
Self-myofascial release aka foam rolling, is a stretching technique that involves applying pressure to muscle tissue and fascia with the goal of decreasing activity at “trigger points” (adhesions formed by your body as part of the injury-repair cycle). In simpler terms: think of foam rolling as a kind of self massage intended to release tense, knotted muscles.
What causes those knots? Poor posture, repetitive movements, pain and injury. All of these create an opportunity and tendency to developing muscle imbalances and compensations, which can lead to those knots, or trigger points, developing.
The benefits of including foam rolling in your warm up for every workout (and cool down for that matter), include:
- corrected muscle imbalances
- decrease muscle and joint pain
- improved recovery
- muscle relaxation
- increased range of motion and flexibility
Putting it All Together…
So what does the right warm up for every workout actually look like?
Obviously that depends on the exact workout you’re getting into. But, there are some steadfast strategies and exercises that can work every time.
The Aerobic Warm Up (5 minutes)
Start with 5 minutes of light cardio. Choose an exercise that will engage the muscles you intend to use in you workout. For example if you plan on doing an upper body workout, I suggest warming up on the elliptical or rowing machine, or even jumping rope – anything that involves your upper body. If you plan on doing a lower body workout, hoping on the treadmill or bike will work just fine.
Mobility Work (5 minutes)
My recommendation is to find an easy to follow/remember flow that wakes up every muscle group…like this one. There’s no need to isolate muscles during mobility. In fact it’s smart to increase range of motion across your whole body no matter what the WOD is.
Dynamic Stretching (30 seconds each)
This is where you can really start to specify based on your WOD.
For lower body workouts include: walking high kicks, walking knee hugs, alternating Cossack lunges, deep lunges with rotation, inchworms.
For upper body workouts include: inchworms, alternating toe touches, cat/cow pose, quadruped lat stretches and arm circles.
Warm Up Set (1-2 sets, 10 reps)
Again, your warm up exercise really depends on the exercises coming up.
- Prisoner Squats or Bench Squats > Weighted Squats
- Glute Bridges > Deadlifts
- Static Stance Lunges > Weighted Lunges
- Arm Circles or light weight Lateral Raises > Shoulder Press
- Light Dumbbell Chest Press > Barbell Chest Press
and so on.
SMR (30 seconds each)
Like mobility, SMR is beneficial on all muscles, all the time. Foam roll each muscle, concentrating on the sore spots/knots. Spend 30-60 seconds per muscle.
Some of my favorites include:
- Glutes
- IT Band
- Hip Flexors
- Hamstrings
- Quads
- Calves
- Lats
