Cold Weather is Upon Us.. Make Sure You Warm Up Properly!
A Proper warm up is the most underrated aspect of a workout program. The fitness industry spends all their time showing you new techniques to help you take training to the next level, but they leave the warm-up out of it in place of “sexier and cooler pictures and videos”.
You should know that optimizing your warm up is the first thing you should do to improve your strength, muscle and fat loss goals. A proper warm up also PREVENTS INJURY!
Getting injured when you work out is incredibly ironic. You’re in the gym trying to better yourself, improve your body’s ability to move - you’re not supposed to get hurt, forcing you to put your training on hold.
What Does a Proper Warm Up Look Like?
A proper warm up can actually be different for everybody. However, there are a few key warm up categories that everyone should be doing. Below is a list of warm-up modalities and which ones we believe are necessary.
Self Myofascial Release - Optional
Dynamic Stretching - Required
Muscle Activation - Required
Corrective Exercise - Required if you have a specific ROM and mobility issue that can be fixed with specific exercises
Post Activation Potentiation (PAP) - Optional
What do all those mean?
Don’t worry, we’ve got a quick and informative description of what each category is and why we do it.
Self Myofascial Release
We’re sure you heard of foam rolling, lacrosse balls, trigger points, etc by now. These are all implements you can use for myofascial release. All that means is “self massage”. The purpose of myofascial release is to promote blood flow to the area you’re rolling out to prep it for a workout. It can also increase your ROM of the muscle if it’s very tight.
How to do it:
Using a foam roller, lacrosse ball or whatever implement you want - roll along a muscle group for 30-45 seconds. You will likely feel some “trigger points”, you can spend some time holding that trigger point for a additional 10-20 seconds and focus on deep breathing.
We usually recommend 1 set of each muscle group but if you feel like you want more you can do two sets.
Dynamic Stretching
Dynamic Stretching is a type of stretch that helps increase blood flow and tissue temperature to the working/stretching muscles. We prefer dynamic stretching to static stretching 90% of the time for a warm up. This is because dynamic stretching prepares the muscles to be worked and loaded. Studies prove that this method improves performance vs static stretching which can hinder performance (although this is situational and individual).
How to do it:
The purpose of dynamic stretching is to warm up the muscles and increase ROM.
You're going to simply perform each movement with the intent of lightly stretching the muscles and focus on form to utilize the right muscles.
Check out our on the spot dynamic stretches video below:
Muscle Activation
This is HUGE, if you’re not doing muscle activation exercises in your warm up you’ve gotta give it a try! Adding this into your warm up can single handedly increase performance RIGHT AWAY!
Muscle activation exercises are exercises that isolate a muscle/muscle group forcing them to work. Muscle Activation is commonly used in the abs, glutes and back. This is because those muscles can be turned off during prolonged periods of sitting - something most people do in the modern world during work.
Throwing an exercise or two of activation exercises in to immediately feel stronger and more stable.
How to do it:
Whichever muscle group isn't firing effectively needs to be “activated” with an isolation exercise that forces the targeted muscle group to work. This has been proven to improve strength, performance and decrease injury.
Programming for this is totally individual however many people benefit from abdominal and gluteal activation.
Pick whichever exercise you want - let's say glute clams for someone whose glutes aren't firing properly. You can perform 1-2 sets of 8-15 reps. This will help warm-up the muscle by giving it a little pump (but not so much that you tire out the muscle) and it also “wakes them up”.
Here are a couple examples below:
PAP (Post Activation Potentiation)
This is a newer warm up technique that you may not have heard of. PAP is a method that immediately improves strength and increases the volume capacity you have within a workout. This is because it activates your biggest strength muscle fibers before you even start your workout. It achieves this by using a power based exercise or a relatively heavy (80-90% 1RM) strength exercise in order to activate those strength fibers. Then when you go to lift the rest of your workout, your top fibers are all ready to go!
Here’s an example of what it feels like: If you lift 135lbs one set, then rest 2mins and lift 95lbs, the 95lbs seems as light as a feather. This is the same concept with PAP.
Here’s how it translates to better performance in the gym: Say you can normally lift 95lbs for 10 reps max. If you work up to 135lbs for a set of 1-5 reps then the next set take some weight off the bar so you’re back at 95lbs, you’ll usually be able to squeeze a couple extra reps out. In my experience
Top athletes are getting even stronger and quicker using this technique before a workout. The same concept applies here, lift heavy for 1 set to activate all the high threshold strength fibers so they’re ready to fire maximally during a game. The effect can usually last 15-20mins as well.
Make Sure You Warm Up Accordingly
The cold weather makes warming up before a workout that much more important. Cold and stiff muscles are more susceptible to injury. Make sure you don’t skip your warm-up. It’s even more important as you age.
Warm-ups are also something that can be tailored to the individual. If you want something custom to your goals give us a shout! We’d love to help!