You Don’t Need a Long Warm-up
How and why you should warm up + simple, effective and short routines for different circumstances and joint health prescriptions
*This article will explain how intense warm-ups are unnecessary and counterproductive – specific warm-up routines for joints that need special care are listed at the bottom*
Purpose of Warm-ups
A warm-up is supposed to simply prepare the body for intense efforts that you will most likely be partaking in before a training session or competition of any kind. By properly warming up, your bodies nervous system, mental state, and muscle/joint/energy systems will be primed to be used to a greater extent + avoid potential mistakes and injuries.
You may notice during training sessions that as you engage during the session, you “hit your stride” and actually are stronger/smoother AFTER you have started for a few minutes/sets. This is noticing the body PRIMING itself further and unlocking its potential which was inhibited slightly earlier.
By engaging in a proper warm up - you will both prevent injury but also BOOST YOUR PERFORMANCE and therefore your results in the session.
Beyond being a “prophylactic” for your training, warm-ups can also serve a therapeutic role as well. For those dealing with any recent or chronic nags and pains, the warm-up is the ideal place to get blood flow and posture set in the right positions before loading your body with weight or high impact/demanding exercises. We will talk about some specific warm up practices for those dealing with any common issues later below.
This all being said, a proper warm up is not seriously complicated and need not be overdone.
(See below)
Why Specific, Complicated Warm-ups are Usually Nonsense
The purposeful effect of warming up is to prepare the body for high effort demands but the deliberate goals of “how” to get the body into a primed state has been littered with jargon and gimmicks which leads to a lot of wasted time (and money on useless products).
Dynamic warm-ups and 10 to 15 minute (sometimes even 20 minutes) routines have been promoted by many cultures in the last five years and a significant chunk of it is unnecessary and accomplishes next to nothing.
There are a couple very simple/general goals that will prepare you for training beyond beginning the training session in earnest and they usually do not need a specialized warm up routine that takes more than 5 minutes or so.
A warm up for any type of physical training effort requires
A) an elevated body temperature (hence “warm” up)
B) your heart rate needs to be at about 60% of its heart rate max
C) your sympathetic nervous system needs to be activated.
None of those three things require a 15 to 20 minute series of skips, crawls, rolls, stretches and everything in between. What will be much more time efficient, effective, and enjoyable is having a routine that activates those three things in the way that you need them for the type of training you are doing without wasting your time on an unnecessary “NSCA” recommendation.
Practically speaking, if you just move your body for five or so minutes you get your heart rate up and then perform warm-up actions within your training to ramp up your nervous system you will save yourself a half hour and a ton of wasted energy.
An example routine for a general lifting session is as follows:
hop on a bike or a treadmill and walk or jog at a brisk pace for ~five minutes. You should not be seriously tiring but you should feel that you were giving a small effort physically.
once you are noticeably elevated in your heart rate and your legs/torso begin to feel warm, you can begin your first exercise but use a very light weight that you can perform the first exercise for 20 or more repetitions with and perform 5-10 reps.
Perform another set within the rep range that you are going to be working in with a wait about 60% to 70% of your approximate “working” weights that day.
Perform another set between 70% and 80% after about one and a half to 2 minutes.
Perform another set between 80% and 90% for *half the reps* that you will be using that day.
You can now engage your first exercise heavy working sets to a full capacity.
A simple routine like this avoids wasting time while also avoiding being unprepared for your best efforts. Frequently people underdose a warm-up and then struggle during their sessions more than they realize and other times they actually just tire themselves out before their meaningful training sets and thus also damage their performance by weakening themselves before the most important efforts.
By following a process like the one above you will maximize your performance in a timely manner.
I will add however, some extra therapeutic warm-up routines that can be done before the session to prepare any particular joints that may need it or afterwards to provide extra attention to areas that need healing/prehab.
These short routines are very helpful to deal with a majority of chronic and acute joint issues that athletes and general population deal with. If you are dealing or have dealt with any injury to the described areas before - it is highly recommended you use these to heal the tissue and restore function/prevent reinjury.
These will be listed joint by joint;
Knees:
Walk backwards on the treadmill incline, on a hill, or on a stationary bike with resistance and pedal backwards. Do this for five minutes and it can constitute your heart rate warm up as well.
Deep knee bend teardrops whites can be done for high repetitions for two sets as well. I would recommend doing this before leg exercises for running, sprinting, or any other leg based cardio.
Shoulders/Neck:
use a resistance band can you do 20 to 50 pull aparts, a cross-bench dumbbell pullover for 10 to 20 reps (it provides posture stretch), and a blackburn/handcuff series for 10-15 reps.
Dead hangs from a bar for one to three minutes are also very helpful to clear up any impingements any spinal compression.
Elbows:
banded or light dumbbell exercises like tricep pushdowns and Zottman curls. 2-3 sets of 15-30. (Lots of blood flow)
Hips/low back:
glute bridges/hip thrust 3x20-30 (get a small burn going and squeeze the hold at the top for 3 seconds)
Copenhagen plank 2x 30 seconds each side
Ankles:
2x20 deficit calf raise (body weight)
2x20 tibialis raise (body weight)
Ankle “rolls” both directions until warm
Wrists:
wrist rolls + curls in each direction for 1 set of 30-50 reps
Feet:
“Towel grabs” with toes for several sets until foot feels “awake”
Roll arch on rolling pin or lacrosse ball + calf raises up to toes that you will be using that day.