Warmups and How to Make them Work for You!
Most of us remember going to PE Class or going to practice for sports and were forced to do some kind of warmup. They can be crucial to enhancing performance and preventing nagging injuries down the road. When it comes to the weight room, it has been a free for all on how to warmup properly if you even warmup at all! When coming up with your own warmup you need to consider, you specific needs, what is your overall goal of the training session, and how can I make it as efficient as possible?
What is a Warmup?
The term warming up has been used loosely over time as a way of easing into things or to describe how easy a physical task was. Warmups are a way of preparing your body physically and mentally for the task you are about to achieve.
Some people do a warmup that consists of purely mobility, some do one that can be described as generally fatiguing, and some just do something that gets their mind right before going into their training session.
Realistically a warmup should accomplish all three of these things, but you have to keep in mind what are your specific needs, and how it’s going to help you long term.
YOUR Specific Needs
Warmups generally look similar when we go to a football field, a baseball diamond, or gymnastics meet. You typically see the athletes do bodyweight exercises that help loosen their joints up before they are getting ready for competition. Some of these movements are very generalized while other are very specific to their sport.
The gym is no different but, what do YOU need specifically? In my powerlifting group that I have been coaching for the past five years, I have them start off with 5-10min of mobility work specific to the training we are going to do. If we are doing a lower body day, we focus on loosening up their hips and ankles.
If it is an upper body day, we are going to focus on making the shoulders and T-Spine more mobile. The reason I do that for my powerlifting group is THEY SPECIFICALLY need the mobility work. If my group consisted of a level 8 gymnasts (a high-level gymnast), we would skip the mobility because they don’t need it.
My general population clients could use the mobility work as well, but their physical general preparedness is even worse. Because of that, I take them through a potentiation or pre-fatigue warmup. This usually consists of doing 3 exercises for 3-4 sets ranging from 10-25 reps. We do this to increase their work capacity and prepare their readiness for the movements we are about to do in the training session. More often than not, I also see an improvement in their mobility.
Most of the people in the group work a typical desk job of some sort so they do not do any physical labor at their job. If they were predominately construction workers and general laborers, we would be focusing more on breath work prepare their body to come in and out of stressful situations. It all comes down to what YOU SPECIFICALLY NEED.
Overall Goal of the Training Session
Warmups shouldn’t look exactly the same every single day of the year. Whether it’s the type of warmup you are doing or the different exercises you are using, there should be some changes throughout the year depending on what you are training specifically.
When I am ramping my powerlifting group for a meet or testing day, we will focus more on mobility and cut our potentiation warmup to almost nothing by the end of the cycle. This allows them to focus their energy, mentally and physically, into moving as much weight as possible on their main lift.
Sometimes my general population clients come in with some type of nagging pain or injury so I adjust the warmup to help alleviate that the best we can. By no means is this a replacement for a doctor or physical therapist, it’s simply a way to “knock the rust off” and find a way to make him feel better to get some exercise in rather than none. For example, my older male client was talking about how his low back was bothering him from some yard work we did a few days ago.
His 15min potentiation warmup consisted of
4 Rounds of
· Belt Squats (x25),
o Takes the pressure off of his low back while squatting
o Gets 100 Reps of Squats practicing great technique with minimal weight
o Slowly works into his hips more and more each set
· Banded Hip Abductions (x25)
o Activates his glute medius to take pressure off of his low back
o Reinforces good motor patterns that carry over to the squat
o Builds easy volume in a small muscle
Bird Dogs (x10 each side)
o Works on Core Stabilization while improving mobility
o Teach bracing at a low level before ramping up to a core movement
o Provide light movement in the spine to make it feel better
If I have an collegiate athlete that is trying to pack on size. I’m going to have him do a quick 5min mobility warmup followed by a potentiation 10min potentiation warmup to make sure he is still able to move well as an athlete, but pack in some extra volume to help his muscles grow.
His mobility and potentiation warmup for a Upper Body Day would consist of
Mobility x10 Reps of each
· Rocking Childs Pose
o Reach Throughs
o Mission Impossible
o Wring the Towel
o Shoulder Taps
Pre-Potentiation 4x25 each
· DB Bench Press
o Perfect the movement pattern of the main lift
o Extra volume for muscle mass
· Seated Low Rows
o Teach shoulder retraction necessary for the main movement
o Extra volume for extra muscle mass
· Chest Supported Y-Raise
o Even more upper back volume
o Reinforce mobility and shoulder health overall
How Can I Make it as Efficient as Possible
Having a good warmup is extremely important because it sets up the whole training session. However it is only a small piece at the beginning of the training session. No matter what type of warmup you are doing in the weight room, it really shouldn’t take you more than 10-15 minutes. Going beyond that is going to take time away from what you really want to focus and build on.
In order to make it time efficient, you need to have a plan in place. If you are going into the gym and making stuff up as you go, it can be extremely hard to go through the exercises in a timely manner if you are spending half the time thinking of what you need to do.
Once you have a plan in place, you need to consider what equipment and space you will have available to you. If you are train at a normal gym where Monday is universal chest day, just know you will be extremely limited to upper body equipment do to other people in the gym.
Conclusion
Warmups are a crucial part of your training. It’s a way to set yourself up for long term success but you need to make sure its specific to your needs, prepares you for the training session at hand, and is time efficient so you can put more energy into training and making progress.
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