World class warm up Part I: Components

A seriously effective warm-up can transform your training. Are you guilty of skipping over this important part of training?

Question: when was the last time you read a sample workout routine or article that included a detailed warm up? Last month? Last year? Never?

Your warm up prepares you for the training or competitive session ahead, it’s a soup of ingredients aimed at preparing the muscular, nervous and cardiovascular systems for action allowing them to function at a higher level. A good warm up makes a training session not only safer but more effective. So why don’t more people write about it?

Whilst plenty of column inches taken up discussing different training sessions, training cycles, periodisation etc the warm-up is generally skipped over.  Think about it though, it’s the thing that ties all your training sessions together, it includes the movements and drills you will practice most often through the year!

So what ingredients should you include and in what order?

1. Raise core temperature: this can mean five minutes on a exercise bike, but I prefer the trainee to use a brisk walk to the gym and fast change in the changing room instead. This saves time and is actually much better movement pattern wise.
2. Work range of motion: Range of motion drills are like dynamic stretches. Examples of this include lunges and squats, just body weight, for the hips and legs. Shoulder rolls, full range of motion girly press ups, and shoulder dislocates (with the towel or pole or bar) the shoulders and cat stretches down on all fours for the spine.
3. Activate muscles: As we age, some muscles actually partially switch off even though we continue to train. This means that we have to spend a bit more time activating these muscles. Of course the muscles of the upper back, such as the lower traps, we all need to activate a little bit more (especially if we have an office job). Things such as wall slides and a few cable rows to the chin can help with this. The glutes are a particular muscle group that tend to switch off as we age, so activating these using single leg deadlifts or glute bridges can help. Another very effective way to activate the glutes (and improve your squat and deadlift numbers) is by standing with 1 foot on a weight plate resting on the floor. Keeping the leg straight you hold your pelvis up by squeezing the same glute as the foot standing on the weight plate.
4. Practice lift: We’re already familiar with practicing the lift before going into the work sets. You can also practice a lift that you’re not very good at, using a very light weight such as an empty bar, for example working the rear chain component of the squat by doing light weighted box squats.
5. Ramp up the nervous system: you have a few choices here, you can either:

• Train your movement of choice in explosive fashion working up in weight and reps for example if you’re going to squat, then work the squat on a light weight but completing the reps in an explosive fashion until you reach your training weight. This is very good in the bodybuilder context.
• The Olympic lifts or associated drills: nothing will ramp up your nervous system more than cleans and jerks, snatches or associated exercises like hang clean pulls
• Plyometrics can also be useful: jumps, rebounds,  push-ups with chest slap etc. A word of warning though it can get pretty fatiguing in a short time.

Depending on your goals you might also want to use a little  foam rolling or ballistic stretching but these two techniques  may or may not be right for you in the warm up context

Sample warm up to follow in part 2