The Warm Up: Are you doing it wrong?

Why bother warming up? Is it worth your time?

Spoiler alert — Yes! And, there’s a good chance you’re doing it wrong. More on that later.

Perhaps most importantly, warming up will help you avoid injury. It will also increase your performance and the quality of your workout. 

What is the purpose of a warm up?

Most exercisers are not aware that warming up is important for the nervous system. It’s important to get your body ready to recruit all the muscle fibers that it’s going to need to use.

As suggested in the name, warming up increases your core temperature. This is useful because the fascia surrounding your muscles and other connective tissues like tendons have a thixotropic property. This means the tissues change with heat. They get less stiff and this allows for more elasticity and glide which means less chance of tearing. 

How to warm up:

Be specific

The movements used in your warm up should be specific to what you are about to do. They should incorporate all the joints and muscles you will be putting heavy demand on. That means a cardio warm up on the treadmill is not relevant for weightlifting. However, a set of bodyweight squats would be a good start before doing a goblet squat or back squat. You then would add light weight choosing 30-50% of your normal goblet squat or back squat before moving up to the full weight.

For those sticking with bodyweight squats, you would start by warming up with a scaled down version to start waking up your knees, hips and glute muscles. As an example, you could begin with bridges on the floor or hip thrusts over an exercise ball before moving into your full bodyweight squats.

If you are going to do a full body workout, make sure to choose a few scaled down variations of your exercises before you begin placing full demand on your joints.

Leave fuel in the tank

The warm up should prepare you for your training but not wear you out. Keep these movements at about 50% of your full effort.

Take the time

Allow your body enough time to loosen all your joints and muscles. Each day will be different but warm up long enough to feel your movement is smoother and you feel energized. It’s worth your time — so give it time.

Quick Tip: How to get the most from your stretching

Most of us don’t stretch enough. So here’s a quick tip to get more out of it.

Contract-Relax

1. Using 10-15% of your strength, contact your muscle and hold for 10 seconds.
2. Then relax and ease into the stretch a little bit further. Hold.
3. At the new bit of length you’ve just eased into, repeat the contraction (10-15% strength) and ease in just a tiny bit further.
4. Repeat one last time at the new depth. Hold in your core for support as you ease out of the stretch.

Example Hamstring Stretch:

• While standing, place your heel on a step or chair. Ensure the height is not too challenging for your current flexibility.
• Press your heel down for 10 seconds.
• Keep your back straight and lean forward towards your toes. If it’s just an inch that’s ok.

Starting position

Keep back straight

Remember: Keep the stretch relatively comfortable. Don’t push too far or your muscle will lock up on you and you’ve gained nothing.

This technique can be done on most any area. Try the pecs too. Happy stretching!

My favorite calf stretch

Improve balance, posture, reduce knee pain and more just by stretching your calves.

WHY: The calf stretch is easy to incorporate throughout your day and will give you huge benefit. Tight calves are so important to address because they affect your walking gait as well as squat position. Calves (made up of the Soleus muscle and Gastrocnemius muscle) and hamstrings share connective tissue and have close attachment sites at the knee so you will probably feel the stretch run up through the hamstrings as well. More bang for your buck.

HOW: This stretch can be done with a half dome foam roller, rolled up towel, yoga mat or the foot of a squat rack to give you a few ideas. Post heel on roller/towel etc. and step through to deepen the stretch. Experiment with stepping through, as I did in the image, or placing your feet side by side.

Make sure to stand tall in order to get the most out of the stretch. This walk through is helpful in that you are keeping your hips level. You may notice it even requires a bit of balance so you need to fire your abdominals.

DO: Stretch calves daily and even multiple times a day. (Come on it’s an easy one)
Hold for a minimum of 30 secs per side. Keep a timer or count slowly to 30 because guaranteed you will do it for 7 secs and think it feels like 30 (or is that just me).