Warming up is extremely simple…. And yet, coaches like to make it complicated.
Stay away from people who overcomplicate things … the typical wannabe coach will prescribe moronic routines. You know the type that recommends cariocas to warm up for squats, having intercourse with foam rollers on end, twenty minutes on the cardio bike at 70% of max heart rate, cluster sets on the dance pole…
This set-up is more likely to earn you a restraining order than provide any significant muscular activation – just saying. Here is a simple rule. If the recommended warm-up takes as long as the actual workout, the article was written by fully-certified twatwaffle with zero real life results.
The basic purposes of warm-up are to set the physiological milieu for best nervous and muscular performance as well as prevent injuries. As such, it should help you perform better in the gym, not drain you before the workout actually begins.
A good warm-up should have the following components:
– Specific mobility drills to lubricate and loosen the joints
– Active drills to increase muscles’ active range of motion
– Specific exercises/movements to prepare the nervous systems for the exercises being used during the workout
Note the two keywords: specific and active. We will explain why later those two matter during the warm up process later.
A good warm-up should not:
– Have static stretching
– Include long slow aerobic work
– Last too long
– Be draining to the nervous system
Prepare the Biological Milieu – Load Your Guns
Optimal muscular contractions and energy production can only be achieved under certain physiological circumstances. Here are a few principles I follow to make sure my athletes perform better after warming-up, not worse.
Principle #1: Raise the core temperature
A warm-up should, funnily enough, warm your body up.
Research has shown that with every 1 degree Celsius increment max power goes up by 12%. In addition, increasing core temperature allows the disruption of transient bounds in connective tissue. Likewise, blood flow improves with rising temperature as oxygen dissociates more easily from hemoglobin or myoglobin. Also remember that all biological systems are governed by enzymes. Enzymes are protein based and therefore both pH and temperature sensitive. This is due to the way proteins fold or unfold. Secondary and tertiary structures of proteins are the best predictors of how efficient the contractile and energetic machinery is.
If the temperature is so high that you can feel Satan sliding seductively down your spine upon setting foot in the gym you might miss the point but I’ve known athletes complaining about frost bites after performing squat. Research shows that for best results in optimal hormonal production, the gym temperature should be 20 Celsius or 70 Fahrenheit. There really nothing you can do to get cooler. Just be sure to hydrate adequately as performance drops as early as with a 2% decrease in body weight by dehydration. As for cold weather, the most bang for your buck sartorial life hack is to wear a hat as 10% body heat is lost through the head.
Common Mistakes – when the workout does the actual opposite of what it’s intended to do in the first place
A slightly acidic pH is conductive to greater gains in hypertrophy. True. But as always there is a fine line between good and optimal. In fact an excessive drop in pH is highly detrimental to performance. This is why doing cardio pre-workout is not only a waste of time but also absolutely counter productive. Actually an over acidic pH disables fast twitch fibers. Don’t shoot yourself in foot and ruin your best efforts at hypertrophy and strength by performing unnecessary cardio.
To make the matter worse, Dr Schwarzbein top expert in endocrinology in relation to diabetes has pointed out that warming up on a treadmill or using the treadmill, per se, increases insulin resistance, by 46% in six to eight weeks. What can be said? There are no redeeming features to cardio.
Also warm-up should not create undue fatigue. Simple rule is if the warm up takes as long as the actual workout, the coach who prescribed it has a very questionable grasp on the reality of weight training.
Principle #2: Prevent injuries
As mentioned earlier, warm-up prevents injuries. About 30% of injuries occur at the level of skeletal muscle, for recreational or professional athletes alike. Even if static stretching is commonly used, and science is very clear on that, it elevates the likelihood of injury. When you think about it, stretching pre-workout makes absolutely no sense. Stretching diminishes strength and relaxes the CNS. In the same vein, foam rolling as a relaxing effect as well as the tendency to create scar tissue thus limiting ROM. No bueno!
Moreover in my experience, most weight training injuries occur when someone very keen on working out figures out (mistakenly) that warm-up sets are optional or a time waster. So if you came up with the genius idea to skip the warm-up altogether well, think again, Michelangelo. If you want to be strong and last in the Iron-Game you need to stay healthy.
So, for example, you’ll have a squat workout consisting of 5×5, at 100 kilos. With squats there’s a lot of research that shows that the mobility of the ankle is what decreases the probability of injury of the lower extremities be it ACL tear, hamstring pull or groin or whatever.
So the first thing to do is go on a calf machine, and stretch the calves for 8 seconds. Select a weight that is enough to stretch you, it should be too heavy to lift. Then I finish off with a 2 seconds voluntary contraction in order to reset the pattern for strength. If you do static stretching you don’t finish with a contraction, you’re more likely to get injured.
So, first thing is to make the ankles flexible.
Principle #3: Address the ROM – Jam-Clearing Drills
Then, hit the bar, and squat. For example, you are squatting, and depending on which muscles are tight, hamstrings, ankle extensors, quadriceps or whatever. Using the same principle as above, do PNF stretching, to ensure mobility for the range of motion.
Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation stretching is superior to static stretching insofar as it helps “prime” the nervous system and potentiates the sympathetic nervous system. PNF stretching is done by first performing a static stretch for the target muscle and then contracting the muscle to be stretched isometrically, followed by performing the same static stretch for the target muscle. This type of stretching will allow you to stretch through a greater range of motion than with a traditional static stretch.
This kind of stretching is done after the first warm up set, if need be. That first set should tell you what needs to be worked on. Depending on the severity of the restriction in the ROM a specific remedial workout could be scheduled.
KCE techniques are also amazing when infused into the warm-up. (Learn all the KCE techniques with us here – KCE COURSE) You will find out that faster twitch individuals those most likely to be bent on heavy duties activities will reap the most striking strength enhancements from these methods.
Lastly, warm up is joint specific. When training arms, use dumbbell exercises first to warm up the elbow properly. The joint is free from fixed patterns of movements and moves without constraints through a greater ROM. All the above ensuring proper lubrication of the joint alongside the other advantages of the warm-up.
Principle #4: Prepare the Nervous System – Finger On the Trigger
Hence the warm-up informs the central nervous system what ROM will be used. You can look at it as a refresher on what motor skills will be tapped into. It ensues that the complexity of the lift will dictate the number of warm up sets.
Olympic lifters have specific warm-up drills where they break down the lift into smaller easier tasks. Each subsequent movement builds up on a simpler motor task. It allows perfect technique to be ingrained in the cortex. Advanced lifters (and we are talking years of training under the belts) can somehow skim quickly over these drills.
Additionally, the warm up activates the CNS. Actually, a proper warm-up convey an crucial piece of information: the weights are going to be heavy.
The number of sets to warm up is a function of how low of a number of reps you will use. As a you rule of thumb: the stronger the trainee the more warm-sets are necessary. If you can’t bench press double your body weight yet it won’t take long. But say you are like Jeremy Hoornstra with a bench press at 2.74 BW it’ll take a tad longer…
Here some general guidelines:
Reps in workout Number of Warm- up Sets
1-3 6-8
4-7 4-5
8-10 3-4
11 and Plus 1-2
So lets says you are going to do power cleans for sets of 1-3 reps in the 300 lbs range, your warm-up will look this.
In this process you have you to use the very scientific “guesstimation”’ principle.
Lets say your recent loads on the power clean was 300 lbs, then I would suggest the following warm-up. Just look at the numbers for now. The explanation will follow.
Set 1: 120 x 4 reps
rest 10 seconds
Set 2: 120 x 4 reps
rest 30 seconds.
(yes the weight is the same for the first two sets, remember it is a warm-up)
Set 3: 180 lbs x 3 reps
Rest 30 seconds
Set 4: 210 x 2 reps
rest 30 seconds
Set 5: 240 x 1 rep
rest 2 minutes.
Set 6: 255 x 1 rep
rest 2 minutes.
Set 7: 270 x 1 rep
rest 2 minutes.
Set 8: 285 x 1 rep a.k.a the P-set* (more of that later)
rest 3 minutes.
Set 9: 305 x 2 (first workout set)
You pick the right weight for set 9 based on the velocity of the bar in set 8.
Principle #5: Potentiate the CNS – Pull the Pin Out Of the Grenade
That’s for a classic warm-up. Now, let’s look at the P-set.
There’s good and there’s optimal. Over warm-up is a technique I first learned about in 1973 through the writings of a Finnish power lifting coach. I remember the academic name was 96 letters long – no kidding! Basically it means proprioception set. For short, P-set. But that’s a way to warm up and it will make you feel like Superman on PCP.
This technique allows you to excite the nervous system. What you do is basically performing heavy singles, staying short of failure, before your work sets. The subsequent work sets will be easier to perform.
So lets say, you want to do 5 sets of 5 reps at 100 kg, the process would look like this:
- 4 @ 40 kg rest 10 seconds
- 3 @ 60 kg rest 30 seconds
- 2 @ 75 kg, rest 60 seconds
- 1 @ 85 kg, rest 120 seconds
- 1 @ 95 kg, rest 120 seconds
- 1 @ 105 kg, rest 120 seconds
- 1 @ 112.5 kg, rest 120 seconds
- 5 x 5 at 100 kg, resting 3 minutes between sets
Of course, there are a lot of individual differences between rep performance and actual max.
In a Nutshell – Reader’s Digest
The neuromuscular system needs to only know 2 things: what the range of motion is, and that the weight will be heavy.
So if you are doing a bench press, the best way to warm up is bench presses for multiple sets of low reps, with progressively heaver weights. So very simple!
Note: Always come prepared – write your weights, sets, rest in advance in your journal. Write it as if it has already happened, and make sure to comment on how it benefits you. It has to have an emotional component for the trick to be effective.
Have fun and ditch the cariocas already!
