WHAT SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN YOUR WARM-UP
You’re headed to the gym and haven’t gotten much movement in yet today. You know that before you get any movement in for the day, you absolutely need to make sure your body is feeling prepped and ready to go. But knowing what to do, and how much to do, may be something you’re not as comfortable with.
Just like the workout being programmed, your warm-up can make a difference in your performance long term by increasing muscle temperature, core body temperature, and blood flow.
The warm-up period is performed before the workout. A good warm-up covers the basics listed above, but a great warm-up helps incorporate more specific movements as well, making your working sets feel much smoother, and helping get more out of each rep and set.
Curious about the benefits?
An effective warm-up can…
Increase speed of muscle contraction and relaxation for the working muscles
Improve rate of force development and reaction time
Improve strength and power
Improve delivery of oxygen to the muscles
Increase blood flow to working muscles
Your warm-up can be broken up into two main components, a general warm-up and a specific warm-up. These components ensure every workout is started off on the right foot.
General Warm-UP
Your general warm-up is a period of time, somewhere between 5-10 minutes, of warming the core body temperature. This can consist of anything cyclical, such as walking, jogging, jump rope, rowing, or biking. This can be chosen by you based on personal preference. What you do should be kept lower intensity, but enough to create an increase in heart rate, respiration, and typically, your body will feel more agile and able to move.
Specific Warm-up
Your specific warm-up is a period of time up to around 15 minutes that provides more specific movement patterns to your workout to come. Depending on your sport or activity, these movements will look similar to what you are doing for the day.
For example, on a lower body focused day, you may have goblet squats or back squats on the menu. Your warm-up might include body weight squats or lunges that promote the same movement pattern.
On an upper body day, if you are going to be performing bench press, you may do push-ups or Dumbbell chest press. Performing a few different movements that correspond to the day’s workout can be an effective way to make your workout go as well as you want it to!
Here's an example warm-up for a lower body, squat focused day:
3 Rounds:
Goblet Squats at light load x10-12 reps
Single Leg Glute Bridge x8-10 reps each side
Forearm Plank 3x:20-:30s
*Perform each round at increasing intensity to around 75% effort*
What about flexibility and stretching?
Another common piece that comes into play with warm-ups is flexibility and stretching. Although static stretching is a common practice during warm-up, there is not research that supports this helping, and could potentially hurt performance thereafter. The one type of stretching seen to possibly be beneficial during a warm-up is dynamic stretching.
Dynamic stretching includes movements like arm swings, a lunge with rotation, and inchworms. Think of these as movements that include your foundational movement patterns but through a range of motion, or including a part of that foundational movement.
Here is how you could incorporate these into the above warm-up:
3 Rounds:
Forward Lunge w/ Elbow to Floorx5-10 each, increasing ROM each round
Single Leg Glute Bridgex8-10 reps each side
Forearm Plank 3x:20-:30s
*Perform each round at increasing intensity to around 75% effort*
As the lunge is a similar movement pattern to the goblet squat, we can utilize this to still warm-up for squat patterns, but move through a dynamic stretch as well as increase your flexibility and range of motion for working sets.
The most important thing to remember is that taking the 15-20 minutes to warm-up prior to starting your workouts can allow your body to perform at it’s best. It can help decrease risk for injury and make your workouts more enjoyable by allowing you to ease into the work versus going from 0 to 60.
So don’t skip your warm-ups! Create the habit, and include it as part of your workout each time you enter the gym!
With Good Vibes - Coach Shelby