1. Prepare your body for performance
2. Help prevent pain and injuries

Those are two compelling reasons to put some effort into constructing an effective warm-up routine for each of your workouts.

A good workout starts with a good warm-up. As Breaking Muscle podcast guest Dr. John Rusin says, a warm-up should accomplish two things:

1. Prepare your body for performance
2. Help prevent pain and injuries

Those are two compelling reasons to put some effort into constructing an effective warm-up routine for each of your workouts.

Yet I bet you struggle to muster any enthusiasm about planning a warm-up, let alone going through one. I get it; warm-ups are boring, but warming up properly for your session can reduce your risk of injury and improve the quality of your training.

Better training equals better results.

Focusing on this performance enhancement aspect is key to getting the most from your warm-ups. Let’s be fair; nobody is excited about warming up. It is often treated as an inconvenience, a waste of time, or even completely ignored.

As such, the warm-up often receives a half-assed effort and doesn’t elicit the benefits it should.

After a good warm-up, you should feel alert and primed to give your best performance. It would be best if you were revved up and raring to go.

Instead, I see most people looking sluggish, uninspired, and ill-prepared during and after their warm-up.

Specific Warm-Ups for Specific Workouts

Your warm-up should signpost what you are planning on doing in your training session.

If another coach looked over your warm-up without knowing what the session entailed, they should be able to make some general guesstimations about the session’s goals. They could not predict what you will be doing exactly but, gathering a general sense of what muscle groups/movement patterns or what capacities are being trained should be possible.

If not, then your warm-up probably isn’t specific enough.

Your warm-up should be specific to your workout. Gone are the days of picking a bit of cardio equipment to waste 5-10 minutes on, doing some arm and leg swings, and then attacking your first exercise.

A good warm-up has specific goals and is specific to the workout that follows.

It should also be specific to you. What will prepare you for a good squat workout will be different to me. The principles behind the warm-ups will be the same, but the exact protocol should vary based on your needs. Here are some fundamental principles to consider when planning a warm-up routine.

RAMP Up Your Warm-Up

The RAMP acronym is a pretty good one to have in mind with your warmups.

• R – Raise body temperature, heart rate, and blood flow
• A – Activate specific muscle groups
• M – Mobilize joints
• P – Potentiate performance

Ticking off each element of the RAMP protocol is a good starting point. To further things a bit, you need to consider the demands of the session and your current capacity.

For example, if the goal is to bench press as heavy as possible, specific pre-requisites are needed to maximize performance. In this case, your warm-up should reflect and address these.

Lengthen, activate, and integrate is part of the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) model and is also something I think works well in a warm-up and has a substantial crossover with the RAMP approach.

Some muscles might need more length to help you reach a given range of motion, while others may not be strong or stable enough to provide the stability required to hit the full range. By lengthening and activating those muscles that need it, you can often see rapid improvements in range.

That’s great, but increased range without control is an increased injury risk.

At this point, it is best to integrate them into a fundamental movement pattern to try and ingrain good techniques and reinforce the range you’ve just created. For example, after stretching your hip flexors and performing isometrics for your glutes, a goblet squat would be a good choice.

By assessing your limiting factors and focusing on the parts in an isolated fashion, you can, in theory, then piece them back together in an integrated manner.

For example, a lack of range of motion at the ankle joint may limit your squat depth.

You lack the required dorsiflexion for your shin to travel forward and your knees to pass beyond your toes without your heels lifting.

In this scenario, it is worth looking at both sides of the joint. What muscles might be tight and limiting your range, and which muscles might be too weak to stabilize the joint in extreme ranges? Often if you work on both sides, you get noticeable improvement quite quickly.

A possible solution to this example using the NASM model would be to:

• Lengthen the calf (by static or PNF stretching)
• Activate the anterior tibialis (using isometrics)
• Integrate this into the squatting movement

If range and quality of movement improve, you know that your intervention has worked and that the ankle ROM was a limiting factor.

A detailed, joint-by-joint rundown of this method is beyond the scope of this article. Still, the critical point is the thought process behind piecing together an intervention that targets muscle length, and activation then integrates these into a multi-joint movement.

The multi-joint movement can then act as a feedback tool to the effectiveness of your strategy.

Next-Level Warm-Ups

The above example is a suitable protocol, but an even better one is a layer on a stability challenge. Stability is your ability to resist force. It takes the isolated activation/low-level strength work and makes it more functional.

For example, band lateral walks provide a challenge to strength and an activation drill for your glutes. Still, they don’t carry over that well to the proper function of the glutes (and other muscles) in stabilizing the hip during gross movement.

To target this function, you could add an exercise that challenges your ability to create stability (aka internal stability). A good choice in this example might be a single-leg RDL.

When picking a stability drill, the key is to pitch it at the right level, and it shouldn’t be so difficult you cannot do it.

• Falling flat on your face attempting an advanced stability exercise isn’t going to do anything for you.
• Likewise, something not challenging enough will lead to no progress.
• Something on the edge of your current capability is the place to be.

It requires concentration, you can maintain textbook form, but you constantly have to micro-correct your position to complete the rep. That will improve your stability and be a worthwhile investment of time and effort.

The Warm-Up Should Optimize, Not Be the Workout

Don’t make these stability drills the workout. They are part of a warm-up designed to optimize your workout, not be the workout themselves. They should not create so much fatigue that your training performance suffers.

They should potentiate it. Done correctly, they will allow you to create more internal stability where you need it, allowing the target muscles to showcase more force output.

When adding stability work to your warm-ups, focus on quality, not quantity. A couple of sets done with great form is what you want. It would be best if you weren’t pushing to muscular failure or generating lots of fatigue. This focus on quality is not the time to try and test your 1-rep max single leg deadlift!

The stability drills you choose should progress over time.

Taking the single leg RDL example, you might progress as follows:

Your rate of progression The quality of your reps will determine your rate of progression through these variants at a predetermined rate. When one exercise feels good, and you are confident in your ability to perform it without it representing much of a challenge, then move on to the next and so on.

Integrate—Don’t Separate

At the end of the NASM model, the integrated part is a key element that people so often seem to miss.

Stretching specific muscles, activating others, and mobilizing joints can be helpful, but only if they result in improved training or increased performance.

The way to achieve this is to address specific mobility and or isolated activation work and then incorporate them into a gross motor pattern like squatting, which integrates all the components you’ve just been using.

If the mobility and activation work were effective, you should see an improvement in movement quality on the main movement. This integration is an invaluable and instant feedback tool.

Jordan Shallow has taken the integrate component one step further:

• He is a proponent of integrating the warm-up into the workout.
• Not only does he integrate a multi-joint movement at the end of the warm-up sequence, but he integrates the main lift into the warm-up.
• He places a set of the primary lift for that day at the end of the warm-up sequence.
• You go through your warm-up routine then hit a light set of your main lift for the day.
• Then, you go back through the warm-up sequence and perform a slightly heavier set of the main lift.
• Each time you go through the main movement, it should feel better.
• Each time you get instant feedback on the efficacy of your warm-up protocol.
• The main lift, when done properly, feels crisper, and your working sets are nicely grooved.

Integrating the main lift into your warm-up like this is a great feedback tool. In my experience, it is far superior to the more common approach of separating your warm-up and workout into distinct elements.

You aim for optimal performance on your main lifts in a session, and your warm-up should be preparing you. After every warm-up sequence, a set of the main lift enables you to assess if your warm-up effectively addresses the limiting factors.

Piece Together the Warm-Up Puzzle

There is no one correct way to warm up. The key is to remember it should improve performance and manage injury risk.

To achieve those, it should help you mobilize and stabilize the key joints involved within the workout.

• Achieving this by incorporating the RAMP and the NASM protocols with an added stability drill is my default setting.
• Even within this framework, there is a large scope for variation, and the warm-ups should evolve based on your development.

To help illustrate this point, let’s take one of my clients as an example (this guy is pretty typical of my average in-person client).

Here are some vital bits of info to consider:

• Good athletic background as a kid/early adult
• Worked a desk job for 10-15 years
• He gained some weight and lost mobility and strength through his late twenties and early thirties.
• Got back to training after about ten years out of the gym; During this time, he saw some excellent results (lost fat, gained some muscle) and some bad ones (nagging shoulder pain, lower back pain)
• His goal is to get back in shape – he wants to shift the dadbod and see his abs for the first time in 15 years. Oh, and he wants to bench 225 lbs for five reps again (this is a performance goal that he gets genuinely excited by)
• My primary goal is to help him reach his goals but give him some of what I think he needs.

What I think he and similar clients need:

• Increased thoracic extension
• Excellent shoulder stability and mobility
• Greater upper back strength
• To lose about 15 lbs of body fat

By developing the thoracic extension and shoulder mobility and stability, they will better tolerate bench pressing. Your clients will also set themselves up to be in a better position to display their strength levels.

Thus, performance will improve. Finally, there is a pretty good chance their shoulder pain will clear up if we can improve mobility, stability, and strength around the shoulder.

With that bit of overview, it’s possible to begin painting some broad-brush strokes about their program, and therefore, what their warm-up will include.

Let’s also remember that this is a successful type-A achiever with a high-stress life who doesn’t want to spend too much time flopping around on a foam roller or doing mobility drills. I need to get them a result and show signs of progress quickly to get their buy-in.

This guy wants to get on the bench and start whacking plates on. He remembers how he looked, felt, and performed this as an 18-year old and wants to get back to that. Sadly, he’s in the mid-30s with banged-up shoulders.

Here is the protocol I used with this particular client in his Primer phase.

Repeat through for a total of three times.

After this, he performed a slightly heavier final warm-up set of bench and then followed his planned working sets.

This warm-up protocol addresses the key areas he needed to address and pretty quickly got him doing what he viewed as the main event– benching. If I had done A1-A3 three times through before he got to touch the barbell, I think his interest would have vanished.

Warm-Ups Should Be Progressive

As I mentioned earlier, this guy wasn’t interested in doing a super long warm-up.

He did, however, want to bench. The subjective feedback he got from each warm-up set of bench press feeling better was enough to get his buy-in and commitment to follow the routine for a few weeks.

Nobody wants to be a pro at warming up, though. Pretty quickly, the novelty factor wore off, and he was less enthused about this warm-up. The good news was that the work we did in his warm-ups paid off.

His workouts also capitalized on those warm-ups and reinforced the key attributes we were looking to address.

This feedback meant that the improvements in mobility, stability, and strength around the shoulder became more ingrained. Pretty soon, they were not such an issue. Consequently, they didn’t need so much attention in his warm-ups. We could progress and streamline his warm-ups to get what we needed without wasting any time.

As with anything in training, we progressed this incrementally, but after eight weeks, his warm-up sequence looked like this:

Repeat for a total of three times using progressively heavier sets on the bench.

He had developed adequate thoracic extension, upper back strength and synchronization, and external rotation strength. At this stage, this could all be maintained with one exercise. He didn’t just maintain; it was developed, but we freed up more time to train these qualities in a progressively overloading fashion within the workout.

This progressive overload allowed his rate of progress to accelerate.

Warm-Up and Training Synergy

Your warm-up should prepare you for your workout by following the RAMP method. For many deskbound people, this will revolve around improving mobility.

Once you’ve improved mobility, it is important to retain it. This is done by working through a full-ROM and developing both stability and strength in the end ranges.

Your warm-up reflects what you want to do in your workout, but your workout should also mirror back the key elements that needed addressing in your warm-up.

Use that principle to assess whether your warm-up and training work synergistically. If they do, then very quickly, your need for extensive warm-ups will disappear completely, and you can allocate more time to doing the fun stuff–training.

The post Do World Class Warm-Ups for World Class Performance appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Although the dynamic warm up has become more mainstream over the past decade, there are still many questions when it comes to programming. It’s easy to place too great of an emphasis on soft-tissue work, activation drills, and corrective exercises that can be an endless rabbit hole.

If you find yourself spending more time warming up than actually training, listen up. I call this majoring in the minors – and it’s is a perfect way to attain sub-par results, even if you are seemingly spending your time and energy training.

Simplifying your pre-workout routine will exponentiate your results and save you a hell of a lot of time in the process. Time to strategically trim the fat off your long and tedious warm up routine with surgical precision.

The Dynamic Turning Point

As a sports performance physical therapist who specializes in body composition and orthopedic health, I’ve seen some amazing things from physio-esque warm ups and programming. But if you are moving well with no glaring dysfunctions or pain, is there really a need for all the fluffy programming on top of a traditional strength and conditioning program? I used to think so, but here’s what changed my viewpoint.

My own pre-training routine was getting a little out of hand about a year ago. I have expertise in this niche in the industry, so it just made sense to use what I knew to program my own dynamic warm up and activation routine before every big lifting day in my programming. I was spending nearly 25 minutes warming up before every session, and an additional ten minutes in an active cool-down at the tail end of my training days.

For someone who makes a living programming training and regeneration strategies for clients all over the world including Olympians and MLB All-Stars, I’d let my curiosity get the best of me in my own programming, tacking on a half hour to every single training day. At the end of the week, I was spending an additional four hours warming up and cooling down. But what was I getting out of that time?

For someone with no notable previous history of injuries, no major dysfunctions, and great requisite movement capacity, it had just become absurd, and I was in need for a big turn around. Was that four hours a week enhancing my body, or had it just become a ritual with no underlying purpose or progression? Time is one of the most precious commodities in the world, and aimlessly pissing it away is unforgivable. But how do you determine what is working and what is wasting time in terms of exercises in a dynamic warm up? Not so simple, is it?

“It was time to do what every coach and therapist passionately preaches not to do – to ditch the dynamic warm up altogether, and determine my own functional and performance baseline.”

I decided to go back to my scientific roots and set a baseline for myself. Any time you carry out an experiment, it is of the utmost importance to determine a control group for your studies to compare to the variable that is being manipulated. In this case, the control was the dynamic warm up and its many components.

It was time to do what every coach and therapist passionately preaches not to do – to ditch the dynamic warm up altogether, and determine my own functional and performance baseline.

The Results of No Warm Up

After bringing my warm up and cool down time back to zero, what transpired with my own body and the results from my hard earned sweat dollars training every day was amazing.  After four weeks of walking through the doors of the gym and starting right in on my strength program with nothing more than a few steps of “warm up” from the door to the power rack, my mobility, body composition, and general feeling of recovery and freshness had never been better.

How the hell could this possibly be? Was the decade I spent in academia mastering movement strategies for correction and optimization a waste of time and tuition dollars? Not quite.

Creating Perfect Movements

It’s important to reiterate that I do not have any glaring physical issues that need increased focus and reinforcement. I was moving pretty well before I hit the warm up rock bottom. This opened up my eyes to something fellow Breaking Muscle coach and a great friend of mine, Charles Staley, had been saying for years, “Maybe all you need is lifting.”

I also knew I was not going to do any soft tissue work, activation drills, or mobility movements before or after my training session. If you know for a fact that the only physical activity you have every day is strength and conditioning work, you will make damn sure that your range of motions, tempos, strategic positioning, and overall synergistic feel of movements are as close to perfect as possible.

“Want to kick your own ass and justify any movement? Then do something new and novel, and compare it to what you’ve been doing.”

Executing your current programming to the apex of your abilities will do amazing things to your results. It’s easy to lose just enough focus on every set to limit your gains and transferrable functional carry over. I made it a game for myself every single rep, asking myself, “How perfectly can I execute this movement?” And to say that mindset worked would be a huge understatement.

Train Less to Gain Muscle and Lose Fat?

This approach allowed me to mentally and physically push to a higher intensity set to set. I was going into my most important lifts absolutely fresh, and was able to push balls-to-the-wall repeatedly with little neural or mechanical fatigue that I was causing myself with my prolonged warm up routines.

I was asked on the Breaking Muscle Radio podcast what was my major training goal, and my answer was simple, “To push myself every single set to the brink of my physical limits and not let my mind deter me from my ultimate performances.” I stand by that, and it becomes increasingly important when you are trimming the fat off any program.

Once a lifter or athlete gets out of the novice stage of training and into the intermediate and advanced stages, a major plateau breaker is found in the mind-muscle connection and the ability to push loads, reps, and sets to the brink of absolute physical failure. That sounds pretty intense, I know. But pushing yourself as close to your physical limits as possible is what will produce physical adaptations in a more efficient manner.

Can You Limit Your Aches by Not Warming Up?

Before you all jump onto my Facebook page to write me some nasty notes pertaining to my blasphemous claims, give this idea a fair shake. By dropping down to my baseline of warm up and cool down in my own personal training, I felt better from a joint, soft tissue, and neurological fatigue standpoint. This may go against everything you thought you knew and love to teach and program yourself, but I am reporting my own self-case study here.

Many warm up routines are done at such high frequencies that the once novel techniques and movements have a decline in execution over time. After any movement strategy is somewhat mastered, there is no progression or way to overload these sequences.

Many people hit autopilot and just go through the motions. This is when a warm up routine can become dangerously close to a movement ritual. But as I discussed above, you need to set a control group and baseline to compare and contrast what is actually producing results.

Corrective movements, soft tissue work, and activation drills are highly dependent on internal tensions, synergistic stabilization, and activation patterns. They also require a high amount of focus and mental acuity to continue to produce the desired result. If you run every day, your body will get more efficient and thus reduce the caloric expenditure and benefit of cardiorespiratory health and capacity. The same can be said for warm up drills. As you do more of the same drill, your body adapts to that drill. Without an increase in internal execution factors, your body becomes less adaptive to the same moves over time.

This is the same reason any new exercise is always perceived to be harder from your sympathetic nervous system response. Want to kick your own ass and justify any movement? Then do something new and novel, and compare it to what you’ve been doing.

3 Worthwhile Warm Up Progressions

Over those four weeks, I identified many aspects of my body and programming that were not clear to be before finding my baseline. And after that period, it was time to strategically place just one or two movements into my pre-workout warm up routine to get the best bang for my buck and justify the time spent on these movements.

I now have six months under my bare minimum warm up training belt, and I’ve determined these dynamic warm up exercises work for split routines with push, pull, and lower body emphasis. These are the exact warm up drills I use before my big training sessions, and I highly encourage you to give them a try – after you set your own physical baseline, of course!

Click to page 2 for video demonstrations of all the warm up exercises

#1 Push Emphasis – Training Day Warm Up

1a. Banded Face Pull 3×10@0s

1b. Banded Over and Back 3×10@15s

#2 Pull Emphasis Training Day Warm Up

1a. Banded Pull Aparts 3×10@0s

1b. Hip Hinge Dynamics with Lat Stretch 3×15@15s

#3 Lower Body Emphasis Training Day Warm Up

1a. Rear Foot Hip Flexor Dynamics 3×12@0s

1b. Half-Kneeling Adductor Dynamics 3×10@0s

• Exercise Prescription is as follows: SetsxReps@Rest

More on warm up methodolgy:

• Why to Include Weightlifting in Your Warm Ups
• Warm Up to Lift Big: A Movement Prep Blueprint for Strength
• How Timing and Temperature Effect Your Warm Up
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

The post How to Trim the Fat Off Your Warm Up Routine appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Here are three explanations of why warm ups improve your performance, followed by three mobility-boosting exercises to ease you into your workouts.

Icy Temperatures, Frozen Performance

Cold tightens. Cold slows. It freezes you up, making your muscles sluggish and unprepared. This has two major implications for your strength-training routine:

1. Cold, tight muscles are more prone to injury. Constricted into limited mobility, muscles tend to strain and pull under stress. Imagine trying to stretch a rubber band over a very big box. If you pull it hard and fast, it’ll snap in half. Slowly warm it up, and it will stretch to take the force of your pull. Now imagine putting that rubber band in the freezer for a while first. That’s your muscles in the winter. Flash-frozen rubber bands.
2. Cold muscles don’t perform as well. They don’t operate at maximum range of motion, they don’t access their full potential strength, and they’re generally less ready for action. Consider your warm up a gentle awakening for your sleepy muscles, followed by a slow cup of coffee, chased by a jolt of espresso. Warming up muscles is the wake-up call that lets you get the most out of your workout.

Turn Up the Heat

Much of the power of the warm up, especially in the winter, lies in the “warm” part. Increasing muscle temperature loosens muscles for injury-preventing flexibility and mobility. It also eases them into movement so they can access their full range of motion. Properly warmed up muscles can execute exercises with proper form, for better results and fewer injuries. Warm muscles are also more responsive. They contract and relax more quickly, allowing for better performance.

“[I]magine putting that rubber band in the freezer for a while first. That’s your muscles in the winter. Flash-frozen rubber bands.”

Proper warm ups also increase all-over body temperature, so your body can work according to its amazing integrated design. If you’re the tin man, a good warm up is your oil can, getting the joints and muscles flowing so they can work together at maximum efficiency. Not only is this key for building functional, full-body strength, but it’s also vital for injury prevention. Nothing in the body works in isolation, and one unresponsive link in the chain can cause a major malfunction. A good warm up keeps your body running like a well-oiled machine.

Light a Bonfire, Not a Match

Warming up only works if you do it right. I hate to break it to you, but a couple static stretches and a five-minute jaunt on the treadmill isn’t going to cut it. In fact, static stretching can actually decrease the efficacy of your strength-training workout, though to what degree is up for debate. Some studies conclude that while static stretching doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t help either. Others, however, fall firmly in the anti-static stretching camp, concluding it’s actually detrimental to power output and prevents maximum performance.^1,2 Either way, sitting and doing a couple half-hearted attempts at touching your toes isn’t going to cut it.

Neither is that just-enough-to-break-a-sweat treadmill run. A recent study found that as far as performance is concerned, a five-minute cardio warm up had the same effect as no warm up at all.³ A high-intensity, fifteen-minute warm up reduced strength. The lower intensity fifteen-minute workout, however, created a strength increase. Long and mellow trumps quick and intense, bringing the desired increased body temperature without the pre-routine fatigue.

Bodyweight Is Best

Bodyweight mobility exercises make the ideal warm up. As dynamic stretches, they provide the kind of movement proven to enhance muscular performance. They increase heart rate, but are of adjustable intensity, so you can craft the kind of longer, lower-intensity warm up found to be most effective. Best yet, bodyweight exercises are inherently focused on functional strength and mobility, making for an excellent full-body warm up.

For a fun and effective warm up, start your workout with these three mobility-boosting exercises. These enjoyable sequences of movements will help you gently ease into your workout and give you a pleasant start on even the chilliest winter days. Start slow, gradually picking up speed as you build heat. The sequences grow more active as the warm up progresses, so moving through them in the listed order is recommended.

1. The Morning Stretch:

Being lying on your back with your knees bent and feet hip width apart.

1. Bridge lift: Inhale to lift your hips as high as possible, then exhale to drop them back down. Repeat three times.
2. Seedling Stretch: Inhale to draw your knees to your chest, bringing your forehead to meet your knees. Exhale to extend the legs all the way out, engaging the abdominal muscles and bringing your legs over your head. Repeat three times.
3. Roll-up: Roll up to seated on an inhale, then roll back down on an exhale. Repeat three times, finishing in seated.
4. Cat Spine Stretch: Come to hands and knees. Exhale to drop your tailbone, arching your back like a cat. Inhale to lift it, rolling the shoulders back as the chest opens. Repeat three times.
5. Cat Paw Stretch: Exhale to walk your hands forward, keeping your hips stationary as your chest drops towards the ground. Inhale to walk back. Repeat three times.

Come back to your back and repeat the sequence three to five times. You’ll move right from your last Cat Paw Stretch to the next sequence.

2. The Warm up Wave:

1. Walk the Dog: Curl your toes under and lift your hips, straightening your legs as much possible in a “down dog” position. Shift your weight from foot to foot, curling through your toes and shifting your hips for around five breaths.
2. Back-and-forth Lunges: Return to hands and knees. Inhale to lift your right leg, exhaling to bring the right foot between the hands into a lunge position. Inhale to bring your hands straight up as you sink into the lunge. Exhale to sink back, bringing the hands to the floor as you straighten the front leg. Repeat three times, then do the left side. Return to the first position. Bending your knees as much as necessary, walk the hands to the feet. Roll up slowly to standing.
3. Shoulder-Squat Sync-Up: Stand feet slightly more than shoulder width apart, toes pointing out. Exhale into a low squat, reaching the arms out in front of you, extending through the low back so that the shoulder blades move apart (external rotation). Inhale back to standing, reaching the arms straight up. Exhale to interlace your fingers behind your back. Inhale to lift the chest, reaching the hands down as you pull the shoulder blades together. Exhale back into the squat. Repeat three times.

Place your hands on the floor and walk back to downward facing dog to begin again. Repeat the sequence three to five times. You’ll move from standing into the next sequence.

3. The Sun Salute:

This is a variation on a yoga sun salutation. It’s a traditional dynamic exercise designed to effectively and efficiently build heat throughout the body, making it a perfect wintertime warm up. Repeat five to ten times.

• Inhale. Reach your arms straight overhead, bringing palms together if possible. Look up.
• Exhale. Fold down, placing hands on the floor if possible, or on your shins. Bend your knees as necessary.
• Inhale. Lift to a half bend, looking forward as you straighten your back.
• Exhale. Step back to plank and lower through a push up.
• Inhale. Upward Facing Dog. Move your chest forward and up, rolling your shoulders down and back. Engage your thighs.
• Exhale. Curl back, lifting the hips into Downward Facing Dog.

LEFT: Upward facing dog; RIGHT: Downward dog

• Inhale. Warrior 1. Bring the right foot between the hands in a lunge. Turn your left foot to seal it to the ground. Come upright, raising your arms overhead.
• Exhale. Step back to plank and lower through a push up.
• Inhale. Come forward to Upward Facing Dog, as before.
• Exhale. Curl back to Downward Facing Dog, as before.
• Inhale. Repeat Warrior 1 on the left side.

Warrior 1

• Exhale. Step back to plank and lower through a push up.
• Inhale. Come forward to Upward Facing Dog, as before.
• Exhale. Curl back to Downward Facing Dog, as before.
• Inhale to jump both feet forward between the hands.
• Exhale. Fold forward, bending the knees as necessary.
• Inhale. Come to standing, arms overhead as in the first position.

While all this might seem like a lot of effort for a warm up, it’s worth spending some time preparing your body for your workout. Whatever warm up you choose this winter, treat it with the importance it deserves. After all, without this vital part of your workout, you might quickly find your results frozen solid all winter long.

More Like This:

• 3 Ways to Build Lean Muscle With Bodyweight Exercise
• 4 Tips for Acclimating to Winter Training
• Joint Pain and Weather: 4 Tips to Ease Discomfort
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

References:

1. Cramer, JT, Housh, TJ, Weir, JP, Johnson, GO, Coburn, JW, and Beck TW. “The acute effects of static stretching on peak torque, mean power output, electromyography, and mechanomyography.” European Journal of Applied Physiology. 93, no. 5 (2005): 530-9.

2. Kay, AD and Blazevich, AJ. “Effect of acute static stretch on maximal muscle performance: a systematic review.” Medical Science Sports Exercise. 44, no. 1 (2012): 154-64.

3. Dupont, Doug. ” Light Cardio Warm Up Best Before Strength Work.” Breaking Muscle. Accessed October 1, 2015.

4. Yamaguchi, T and Ishii, K. “Effect of acute static stretch on maximal muscle performance: a systematic review.” Journal of Strength Conditioning Research. 19, no. 3 (2005): 677-83.

5. Yamaguchi, T and Ishii, K. “Effects of static stretching for 30 seconds and dynamic stretching on leg extension power.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 19, no. 3 (2005).

Photo 1 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Other photos courtesy of Breaking Muscle.

The post Winter Is Coming: Time to Up Your Warm-Up Game appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

At our facility, no matter if we are training athletes, youngsters, or general clients, we take a three-pronged approach to our warm-ups:

1. Alignment
2. Movement Skills
3. Activation

I’m going to break down these three areas and explain why I feel each is important.

Click To Tweet: Build a Better Warm Up with Alignment, Movement Skills, and Activation

Alignment

Many dysfunctions, aches, and pains stem from poor alignment, specifically pelvic alignment. The pelvis is in a unique position in that it can directly affect both the upper and lower body.

The Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) has made a big push in recent years to educate people on the effects of pelvic alignment. A common pattern PRI has identified is something called the left anterior interior chain pattern, or left AIC.

Due to the way our body is structured, we are naturally asymmetrical, and many people tend to fall into this left AIC pattern. It is easily identified by the left side of your pelvis being tipped anteriorly and rotated towards the right. This can lead to the left femur sitting externally rotated and abducted, the right femur internally rotated and adducted, and the lumbar spine rotated to the right.

There are a few ways to test whether you have left AIC, but an easy way is to check your static posture. If you tend to have your weight shifted to the right and hang out in your right hip, then you probably present this pattern. I know I definitely fall into this category, and will catch myself hanging out in my right hip when I’m standing for long periods of time (as pictured above.)

As you can guess, this has the potential to cause problems up and down the chain. On top of that, if you continue to strengthen or stretch in poor alignment, you’re further creating imbalances and instability.

So at my facility, we start every training session with a quick pelvic alignment exercise to set ourselves in a good position before we start adding movement and weight. Closely tied in with pelvic alignment are correct breathing patterns. The breathing muscles play an important role in pelvic control and muscle tone. Linking breathing, pelvic stability, and pelvic alignment together takes a well-rounded approach to this phase.

Movement Skills

After alignment we move on to movement skills. Here we will progressively attack dynamic mobility, stability, range of motion, heart rate, body temperature, coordination, body awareness, and overall movement skills.

Here is an example sequence of fifteen exercises performed for fifteen yards each:

1. Lunge Elbow to Instep with Rainbow
2. Inch Worm
3. Overhead Lateral Lunge to Quad
4. Walking Romanian Deadlift
5. Spiderman
6. Crossack with Rotations
7. Jog with 360s
8. Shuffle with Swings
9. “A” Skip
10. Lateral Skip
11. Backpedal
12. Backward Open Hip
13. High Knee Carioca
14. “A” Run
15. Falling Start

As you can see this is your typical dynamic warm-up, but we have a couple of objectives we like to target. We have a checklist of movements and positions we want to challenge during this portion and they include linear, lateral, backward, rotational, single-leg stance, quadruped position, and upper-lower body separation.

So it’s more than just skips, carioca, and shuffles. We have a rhyme and reason for our movement choices and how they will carry over. Challenging the body through different movements and planes targets total joint range of motion, prepares the body as a whole, and improves spatial awareness.

Activation

Finally after alignment and movement skills, we finish off with activation. We activate to deeper engage specific musculature we want to use during our session. Essentially we want to wake up and learn how to feel these muscles being active.

Now we aren’t saying certain musculature is dormant, this is an exaggeration, but activation is essential to isolate certain muscles and movements to make sure we know, for example, what our glutes feel like and that other muscles aren’t compensating for them.

This section of warm up will typically include the following:

• Glute Activation
• Core/Spinal Stability
• Scapular Control
• Hip Control

We like to finish off our warm up with activation because we want to add stability and control on top of our added alignment and mobility. This goes back to many coaches preaching mobility before stability – making sure we aren’t adding strength or control on a poor movement pattern.

Depending on the day’s workout, activation can be catered. If we have a lower-body or speed-training day, our activation will prepare for that. If we have a heavy upper-body day, our activation will prepare to that.

As an example, here are three easy activation routines:

1. Glute Bridge 2×15
2. Naughty Dogs 2x10ea
3. Bird-Dog 2x6ea
4. Push-Up Rotations 2x3ea

1. Glute March 2x10ea
2. Deadbug 2x6ea
3. Band Pull-Aparts 2×20
4. Bent-Over Y,T 2x6ea

1. 3-Lunge 2x3ea
2. Airplanes 2x6ea
3. Yoga Push-Ups 2×6
4. Clams 2×12

Our System Put to the Test

We recently did self-study at our facility to get an idea if our activation was accomplishing what we wanted. Clients told us they liked the activation portion and we noticed some good long-term benefits in terms of posture, reduced joint pain, and improvement of certain asymmetries and imbalances. But we were curious about the acute changes in performance.

Over the course of six weeks, we tested performance in the standing long jump, ten-yard acceleration, and reverse medicine ball toss, both with and without an activation portion. Long-story short here were our results with 42 people tested:

As you can see from the results, activation points towards improved performance. In the standing long jump, there was an improvement of over three inches. This is significant and definitely something that may be worthwhile for jumping athletes to test out.

The ten-yard dash didn’t show what would be considered a measurable difference, only a hundredth of a second difference. Nevertheless, it is still a slight improvement and may be something that needs further investigation.

On the flip side, the reverse medicine ball toss showed an improvement of seventeen inches with activation. Therefore, activation may be of consideration for throwing and single-output type of athletes.

Overall these results point to activation benefiting single bout strength/power movements. Acceleration or multiple jumps on the other hand involve a great deal of repeated elasticity and shorter ground contact times, which activation may not be able to improve. If this is an area of desired performance, it may be beneficial to add in some low-intensity plyometric work, along with activation for improved results.

The Cool Down on Warming Up

Whew, you’ve made it through another warm-up article. Hopefully this had some new information for you and maybe some light bulbs went off. Warm up may not the sexiest part of your training day, but you know what else isn’t sexy? Being an immobile and injured ball of meat.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Build a Better Warm Up for a Better Work Out appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

As the temperature is still quite low in the mornings, I pay particular attention to my warm ups before racing. One reason is simply to stay warm and comfortable before the start of the event, and the other more important reason is to ensure my body is ready for the effort that is about to start.

The Three Aspects to My Warm Up

First, I do all my warm ups on my competition bike that I will be using. This gives me an opportunity to check that everything is working as it should. I work up and down through all the gears and check the brakes, wheel skewers, cleat tension, and helmet fit. Any last minute adjustments are then made. I have then also completed a mental preparation that everything mechanical is working as it should.

Second, I do some simple and gentle mobility exercises starting from the top of the body and taking it gently through all the ranges of movement in all directions. I find this eases any stiffness from an early morning start and long car journeys. This starts to prepare the body for movement.

Third, I put my cycle on a turbo trainer and start my main warm up. I used to find a quiet road near the start of the race and cycle around this. However, I found I was able to obtain a better quality and controlled warm up on a turbo trainer without the worry of traffic or punctures.

My Turbo Trainer Warm Up

My suggested turbo routine is to take a good five minutes to ease up to 50% of your FTP or around 110-120 beats per minute heart rate. (FTP stands for functional threshold power.) Keep a jacket on and any leggings to stay warm if the weather is cold. This elevates the heart rate, warms the body, and starts the blood body fluids shunting to the main muscles in the legs and glutes. While this gentle activity is taking place, it can be an opportunity to rehearse mentally any race plans of the race route.

Over the next five minutes, ease up to 80% of your FTP or around 85% of your maximum heart rate. You may wish to remove your jacket and leggings here if it is warm enough. This raises the body temperature more and raises the heart rate towards that expected during your event. Also, raise your cadence to your normal race pace at this point. I find this helps to exercise and prepare the neurological system to fire all the muscles at the expected rate.

Finally, include a couple of sprints lasting about twenty seconds and taking the cadence to about 120rpm, if you are able. This provides a further stimulus to the neurological system before bringing the speed back down again and making your way to line five to ten minutes before the start.

The Performance Benefits of a Good Warm Up

One of the reasons I feel it is important to arrive at the start in a warm state can be seen on in the picture. This shows my heart rate rising as I tackle a start at between 280-320 watts. This could be the start of an event. The pink line is my rising heart rate and it took two to three minutes to rise and stabilize to achieve a working heart rate.

During this first two to three minutes, my heart rate is insufficient to deliver enough oxygen and nutrients to the working muscles. In order to perform, I am working anaerobically, using up muscle glycogen and starting to buffer lactic acid as a by-product. As long as I don’t start off too quickly, my cardio vascular system will catch up after these initial minutes and deliver oxygen and also metabolize the lactic acid.

But starting after a thorough warm up will enable your body to arrive at its working heart rate quicker than starting from cold. Starting from cold will mean your body has to work anaerobically for longer, with the risk that it will be unable to metabolize the lactic acid fast enough and you will have to slow down until your heart rate has caught up.

Ideally, you will arrive at your race start warm with a raised heart rate, so as soon as you are off, the cardiovascular system is ready and primed to deliver the oxygen and nutrients. Your heart rate will be raised, fluid will be lubricating joints, and muscles will be warm.

However, arriving at the start in a warmed-up state is not always possible, with the time between finding your place on the line and the start including a wait of up to ten minutes. In this case it is better to ease into the event over the first couple of minutes. This enables the cardio vascular system to come back up to speed and will avoid excess lactate buffering.

Good luck with your events this year and remember to warm up well! If you have a warm-up routine that you love, please share in the comments below.

Photo 1 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How to Warm Up Properly for Your Cycling Event appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Every athlete in every discipline knows the importance of warming up. A good warm up doesn’t just help to keep you safe from injury – it also improves performance. So getting in a good warm up is a strategy we all should utilize.

But sometimes getting a good warm up isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. For instance, there are those times when you do a warm up and feel ready to go. Then, for whatever reason, you are delayed in actually starting your workout. Even worse, sometimes this happens in a cold environment.

In a recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, researchers asked how long you should ideally wait after a warm up to begin exercising, and also investigated the effects of cold temperatures on workout effectiveness.

One of the ways warming up helps you to perform better is by increasing your body and muscle temperatures. Increasing temperature up to a point improves blood flow and primes the muscles and nerves for action. This can still be done in the cold, but once you stop moving, the warmth will be rapidly lost to the air around you. Combining cold temperatures with a long break between a warm up and workout would seem to be a bad idea.

The question of how long you should ideally wait after a warm up to begin exercising is far too complicated to cover in one article. The duration, intensity, and methods used to warm up alone might dramatically affect how long to wait before exercise or competition for ideal results, and even more importantly, it’s not the best researched topic either. So let’s just say, a good time to wait is less than the time it takes for you to not be warm anymore.

In this study, the researchers took some runners and some rowers and had them do four separate trials. They chose athletes from different sports to get a more complete look at the effects.

The trials had two different rest periods that followed the warm ups – five minutes and thirty minutes. They also tested two different temperatures of environments – near freezing and room temperature. Each athlete did a warm up with both short and long rests and in warm and cold temperatures on different days of the week.

To summarize, the four testing scenarios were:

1. Near-freezing temperatures and five minutes of rest
2. Room temperatures and five minutes of rest
3. Near-freezing temperatures and thirty minutes of rest
4. Room temperatures and thirty minutes of rest

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the cold temperature combined with the thirty-minute rest period had a negative impact on performance. The rowers were only affected by the cold temperatures with the long rest period, but the other testing conditions showed little difference in performance results.

The runners were more affected by each variable. The near freezing temperature along with a long rest had the biggest impact. The next two scenarios with the most negative impact on performance were near freezing with short rest and room temperature with long rest.

So when asking yourself if you need to warm up again after a delay in a cold temperature, the answer is yes. The authors recommend wearing warm clothing to help mitigate any detrimental effects, which may allow for longer delays after your warm up. But when in doubt, just warm up again.

References:

1. Marissa G. Spitz, et. al., “The effects of elapsed time after warm-up on subsequent exercise performance in a cold environment,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000000291

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How Timing and Temperature Affect Your Warm Up appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Most people who have been exercising for a while have a preferred warm up ritual. Sometimes this ritual is so ingrained that a lifter will get totally thrown off if the warm up changes at all. Some of this could easily be psychological or otherwise neurological. Figuring out the right warm up for your lifts can be challenging because of the variables that go into your performance.

The issue about how best to warm up is not any simpler when approached by science. In fact, it’s probably even more complicated. Since some warm ups have been shown to improve performance, it casts a long shadow over decades of testing various methods of developing strength.

If one method tested better for developing strength, maybe it just used a better warm up. The warm up isn’t always covered in any great depth in scientific literature, so perhaps many of our assumptions are false. A recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning sought to determine what the best warm up really is and how this might have affected what we know about strength.

Before continuing, it’s important to be clear about what is being tested here. There are many reasons to warm up, including injury prevention. The researchers in this study were concerned only about the impact of the warm up on the expression of strength. But just because a warm up can make you stronger doesn’t mean it’s automatically the best overall.

For this study, the researchers described the difference between general warm ups, like a jog, and specific warm ups. The specific warm up would be doing a lighter version of or similar exercise to the one you’re training that day. In this study, researchers used an ergometer (basically, an exercise bike) to warm up for a leg press. So essentially they were doing a specific and general warm up simultaneously.

Researchers combined two different length warm ups with two different intensities, resulting in four different warm ups. A fifth group did no warm up. Neither of the shorter length warm ups, which were 5 minutes long, had any difference compared to the group that didn’t warm up at all. So while a 5-minute warm up might be good, it isn’t going to boost your performance.

The longer warm ups of 15 minutes were the only ones that altered performance. With the higher intensity, which was enough to yield an average heart rate of almost 150 bpm, strength was reduced. With the lower intensity producing a heart rate of about 115 bpm, limit strength increased.

The jury seems to still be out on warm up sets of the exercise you are preparing for, but at least when it comes to training cardio as a warm up, keeping it light for a full 15 minutes is the way to go. This is enough to gain the benefits of increased body temperature without any unnecessary fatigue.

References:

1. Renato Barroso, et. al., “The Effects of Different Intensities and Durations of the General Warm-up on Leg Press 1RM,” Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 27:4 (2013)

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Light Cardio Warm Up Best Before Strength Work appeared first on Breaking Muscle.