Warm-up effectively to optimise performance

At a first sight, this is hardly the most exciting topic… or the most exciting part of your training. Warming up can be a little boring so it might be tempting to skip it. Mainly if you’re in a rush, or having a lazy day. However, warming up is a fundamental part of a workout, and is often undermined. Even more during the cold season. For all of these reasons, it’s a very important topic to talk about, so let’s get into it.

Warming up properly for your sessions will reduce risk of injury and improve the quality of your training. Focus on the next four key factors to build the perfect warm-up for your needs.

1. Raising the Temperature of Muscle Tissue

The most important thing when it comes to training is tissue temperature.

Before you start your workout you actually have to increase the heat in your body. The right tissue temperature is crucial for a good workout and needs even more attention in these cold times of the year (raise your hand if you’re in the UK right now). Cold tissue equals stiff tissue and as we all know, rigid structures tend to break or snap under pressure. And that’s exactly what training does: it stresses your body (although in a methodical way) to allow you to keep pushing your limits and keep improving. Therefore, in order to prepare your body for an efficient session and of course, to prevent injuries, make sure you break a sweat before working out - even before your warm-up set!

Below we go deeper into what kind of exercises you should do before each of your sets (aka warm-up sets/activations/build-up sets). However, before you get there your body needs to be at a certain temperature. This is not as important in summer or if you’re in a warm country, since you don’t need much to break a sweat, but as I’m writing this article in the UK, I’m under a double cover, and still nearly freezing my ass off. In this state, I would barely consider moving, let alone training. To sum up, do whatever you need to warm up your body to an optimal temperature - put a hoodie on or how many extra layers you want, jump on a treadmill, do some burpees, etc. Just make sure you break a little sweat before you go to the next step.

2. RPR

Reflexive Performance Reset (aka RPR) is a topic on its own. You can check it out here, but

in short RPR is a system that uses trigger points to activate specific muscles for a given activity.

For instance, for running and squatting you would activate your glutes and hip flexors. It only takes a few seconds, but it will make you feel ready and primed for your workout.

Yet again, RPR by itself is not enough if you didn’t achieve optimal tissue temperature first. A rigid structure is still a rigid structure, whether you try to enhance its activation or not, and thus will always be more prone to injury. However, when built into a proper warm-up routine, RPR might make a difference between almost achieving that personal best, and actually doing it.

3. Functional

A good warm-up should be specific to the workout that follows, and therefore have specific goals.

What muscles might be tight and limiting your range, and which muscles might be too weak to stabilise the joint in extreme ranges? Often if you work on both sides, you get noticeable improvement quite quickly. A functional warm-up goes through the movements that you’ll use in your workout. The more muscles you’ll use, the broader the warm-up should be. On the other hand, the more specific your workout is the less variety of exercises you’ll need in your warm-up. Let me explain.

If you will perform a full-body workout (which I usually do with my clients), then your warm-up should mirror that. For this scenario, I would recommend performing stability and mobility exercises for the full body like the bird-dog, side plank, lunges and push-ups. At a warm-up stage, you just need to go deep enough to feel the full range of motion in every exercise and don’t feel tired. If, on the other hand, your session will mainly be focused on something like a bench press, I wouldn’t worry about a full-body activation. The key here for a good warm-up would be a thoracic extension (upper back mobility) and shoulder range of motion/stabilisation. Again, just enough to ensure a full range of motion in those movements and break a sweat. After that, you should be ready to start building up slowly to your working weight.

4. Build-up sets

Once your body is warm, the muscles are activated and you will feel either stable or mobile in all the right places, you can now start your build-up sets. Let’s get back to the bench press example. If your working weight is 100kg, I’d start by doing a few reps with the bar - in fact, you should always start with the bar, no matter how strong you are. Then I would recommend doing a few reps with 40, and working it up in increments of about 10kg (go 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90), before you pass onto your 100kg sets. You can adjust this to your level by implementing bigger or smaller jumps (for example, adding 15kg each time instead of 10kg), but make sure you do at least 2 to 3 build-up sets before you start your actual workout sets.

Outtakes

I know this sounds like a lot and no one loves to warm up… Including me. Yes, I was part of the skip-the-warm-up group, but as I’m getting older, the more easily I get injured, and so the more I appreciate the advantages of a good warm-up, such as the fact that workout sessions become easier and more effective and I’m less worried about injuries.

But mostly, I regret not valuing it enough in previous years, and that’s why I wrote this article

The Warm-Up Should Optimise you Workout, not Replace It

A good warm-up routine will not only prime you to achieving great sessions consistently, but it will also increase the probability of you staying fit and strong for longer.

Remember, the goal is to be able to train forever. You can’t do it if you’re constantly injured. The warm-up doesn’t need to be long, remember: it’s only meant to make you break that first sweat, and gently introduce your body to a full range of motion, thus avoiding a ‘shock’ on your first set. I know, it looks long when broken down in an article like this, but that’s just because I wanted to present it to you step by step. And as said above, you can incorporate your build-up sets as the last part of your warm-up, and you only need a few seconds for RPR if you know the trigger points. You can also start increasing your body temperature even before you get to the gym, by walking at a fast pace, running, and/or adding extra layers. Finally, my clients usually do functional exercises between the build-up sets. For example, after a set of 5 deadlifts at 40kg, do 5 bird-dogs. Then pass onto the next set of 5 deadlift reps at 50kg, then do 5 side plank holds. And so on. By the time you reached your actual working sets, you’ll be warm, activated, stable and primed for your workout.

Hope it helps.

Train ComplEat,

Coach G.