Some people shrug warm ups off or do them half heartedly as undesirable foreplay to “real” exercise, but the truth is that warming up before effort is a great idea if you want to stay whole. Not only does it help with long term injury prevention, but it also prepares the body for movement, which gives you better performance during – and more benefit from – the actual exercise.
What’s a warm up?
A warm up is a preparatory exercise which is done before the main (or “work”) exercise. Warm up exercises generally raise the heart rate and the body temperature, but do not put a lot of stress on the body.
A good warm up should ease you into the work, and leave you charged up and ready to go! If your warm up exhausts you, your main exercise will suffer – odds are that your warm up sets are too intense and could probably serve as a main exercise! If this is the case, you should really consider tuning it down a little.
It’s not about ambient temperature
Despite the use of the word “warm”, we need to make it clear that we’re not talking about the temperature of the room.
You could be working out in hot weather, but that only means that the outside is hot. You still shouldn’t skip your warm up,
because your body still isn’t ready, because warming up isn’t just about body temperature – it’s about being ready to work.
Of course if you’re working out in freezing temperatures you’d need more of it!
Preparing for movement
Your movements during the warm up will also prepare your joints for action. This process occurs naturally with any movement of a joint, which releases Synovial fluid to lubricate and protect it.
It would get released anyway if you skipped the warm up and went straight to the work sets, but then you would be making the joint work at full blast before it’s really prepared, especially if the only other movements during the day were limited to how far you can squirm in a chair!
That is not a good strategy for long term fitness – you wouldn’t do it to your car engine, so don’t do it to your body. Spare yourself the pain and warm up properly.
Stretching is not a warm up
Although stretching has often been used as a warm up in the past, the common consensus today is that it’s really not a good idea to stretch cold. Stretching is great when you’re warmed up, but not before, simply because it puts a strain on muscles which are not ready for it.
Wade makes a good example of this point using mozzarella – take a piece out of the refrigerator and pull at it; it will tear apart. Put it on your pizza and pop it in your oven though (hey, it’s fine as long as you don’t eat it most of the time), and it will become very stretchy. Your muscles work the same way – if they’re cold or tense, they won’t stretch very well and forcing them will just cause damage.
The best warm up for a movement is the movement itself
So, how do you warm up? Getting the heart pumping needn’t take much, but for best effect, you want to prepare specifically for whatever you will be doing. If you’re going to run, warming up with a few bench presses will get you warm, but it won’t help your legs much! Instead, consider what you will be using in your work sets, and base your warm up on that.
In most cases, the best warm up for a movement is the movement itself – there’s no better way of making sure you’re going to hit everywhere that counts!
By doing the same movement at lower intensity, you’re preparing everything without exposing yourself to unnecessary shocks and stress, and getting your heartbeat going nicely. You don’t need ten different warm ups per session, just a few good ones for what you will be doing.
For example, if your exercise will be a deadlift, do a couple of deadlift sets with an easy load. If you’re doing push ups, do a couple of sets with an easier variation.
You could do all your warm ups in one go before your work sets, though in general we prefer to do our warm ups right before the exercise they’re for. Your body shouldn’t have the time to cool significantly if you’re doing other work between the warm up and the work set, but it’s easier to focus if you don’t jump between exercises. Doing a lighter variation of an exercise and working up helps you get into the mindset for it much faster.
How much?
It doesn’t really take a lot to get going. There’s no hard and fast rule as to how much you should warm up, as different individuals in different conditions will respond very differently. However, a couple of warm up sets of whatever exercise you’re doing are usually enough; if adding a jog or a few jumping jacks makes you feel better, by all means do it, as long as it doesn’t burn you out. Remember warm ups are supposed to get you started, not flatten you! Besides, an excessively long warm up will just turn into an excuse to skip or half-ass it, so keep it simple.
If you’re on the older side, you may need to warm up a bit more than someone half your age, but in all cases, the best way is to get a sense of what “ready” feels like through experience. As long as you don’t dive off into the deep end, you should have no problems doing this.
A word on cooldown
While the notion of a cooldown period after a workout has largely been rubbished, some people still think it’s a thing. Our opinion is that it’s not – you cool your body down by letting your body cool down, which it can do perfectly well on its own in a few minutes if you stop bothering it. Easing out of an exercise by doing more work doesn’t really do anything useful for the body.
Take a few minutes downtime at the end of your routine to catch your breath and relax. It can do a great deal for you mentally. If you really can’t stand the thought of being idle for a handful of minutes, this is a great time to do some gentle stretching and breathing exercises, but do try to take a pause at the end before you rush off to do something else.
That short pause gives you some space time to think, and it helps you teach yourself that your exercise isn’t something you just needed to get out of the way before doing “really important stuff”.
Header image: “Etna Volcano Paroxysmal Eruption Jan 12 2011 – Creative Commons by gnuckx“, gnuckx, CC BY 2.0