What Is Our Optimal Way To Warm Up?

Hey, Athletes! What Is Our Optimal Way To Warm Up? - Episode of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up! 

• What Is Our Optimal Way To Warm Up

  • Subscribe on any device HERE 

IN THIS 14-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• This is a Joe solo cast!
• He dives in to all things warm-up
• He discusses how we program our warm up and all the reasoning behind them
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper…

If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here is a link to the study for you: 

• No study this week

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

Don't forget to watch today's podcast!

What Is Our Optimal Way To Warm Up

Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!

To becoming better!

- Jerred

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: This is the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast and we're here to build autonomous athletes and put phenomenal programming into every garage, basement, and spare bedroom out there. I'm Jared Moon and I'm with Jill Courtney. We are strength and conditioning coaches who have turned over 20, 000 people into Garage Gym Athletes over the last decade.

And we're here to reduce the information overload that exists in the health and fitness industry today. We're going to do that by covering relevant science and give actionable takeaways, not only from the data, but from our years of experience. So let's dive in.

Joe: What's going on garage gym athletes today. I want to talk about warmups and warming up how we warm up, why it's good to warm up. Um, pretty much if you're here, you know that it is important to warm up, but I want to get into the specifics of how we program our warmup, how you should program and think about doing your warmup, especially if you're doing your own programming or even if you're doing our programming, you can kind of peel behind the curtain of, you know, how we structure our warmup and how you can further think about and be more intentional with warmups, um, warmups aren't sexy.

They're not that fun to do. Usually it's the hardest thing to start doing, or you just don't want to do it. You just want to get, get through the workout and the warmup sometimes feels sort of in the way it's also, you know, largely uncomfortable because. Just starting to work out, especially if you're sore, if you're tired or anything like that, the warmup just feels extra hard, you know, mentally, even though it's not actually that hard.

You just have to start doing it. Um, so that's why I like having us program the warmups for you or, you know, in our program, we have the warmups laid out. If you just want to want to go into it, um, it's laid out for you. So like you, you take that out of your mind. Sometimes if you just have. Somebody tell you what to do, that there is no decision to it.

You just have that there for you. So I'm gonna talk about the four points of our warmup that we find to be sort of the perfect warmup routine and how you can start to. Do that on your own. If you are programming for yourself or just seeing how, how we do that. So get into the four components. The number one component that we start off with is elevating your heart rate.

So obviously you have to get the body warm. You have to get the blood pumping. It's all about the blood flow to all your muscles and the areas, not just elevating your heart rate, but. This is going to be a row, run, or bike, jump rope, anything you want to do to get your elevate heart or your heart rate elevated.

Usually we'll program it in like two, two minute sections. I'll do it on the Airdyne most days for two minutes, and then I'll move on to the other components. The second one being your main focus. So this is where you're going to target. What is your main focus for that day? So look at your workout. If it's a lower body day, then you're going to do some sort of lower body warmup.

You're going to do, um. Some air squats. I like lunges. Sometimes air squats. If you're doing those, they still require you to be a little bit loose, a little bit, a little bit mobile, mobile, a little bit opening up with your quads. That's why I like unilateral movements, especially because, um, lunges are, are, they're going to prime so many people.

Different parts of the of your legs, I like lateral step ups or even negatives on like a step down lowering. Those are fantastic prime movements. The more you can stabilize, the more you're going to work on your muscles and your legs, well, your muscles in general to warm up. And then you can work through some range of motions as, as everything gets warmed up much more.

So then you can go into your air squats or whatever your priming movement is for that day. The actual back squats are empty barbell. So the second thing you're going to do, you're going to prime your main lift for that day. So yeah, like I said, upper, lower body, lower body, upper body, upper body. But you know, what if you're running?

What if you're doing some sort of cardio? I would say to still prime those areas. So running, you're going to be using a lot of hamstring Um, so like I said, with the unilateral movements, step up, step downs, rowing is going to be a lot of quad or a lot of hip. So lunges are great for that. Um, I like to do, you know, jump roping for calves or, uh, or such like priming your Achilles for running and other things like that.

So really want to prime those areas, even if you're doing some mobility, maybe it's like a calf raise, like a decline calf raise might be really good. Um, moving on to the second thing, you're going to do a counter movement. So I like to. Um, so the counter movement is, it's going to be sort of the opposite of what you're doing.

So going back to your lower body day, I'll do something upper body, usually with the back, because even though it is a lower body day, you're, you're not just like your upper body, just not taking the day off. You're still using it, especially like squats, deadlift. You're using your back. You're really keeping nice and tight on your back.

You're pulling the barbell into your, into your body. Now, whether it's onto your back, into your chest or into your hips, whatever it is, you're still staying activated through the upper body. So, I love doing, um, hanging shrugs or like reverse shrugs, hanging from the barbell and shrugging your shoulders, um, or pull ups and ring rows, something like that.

To really prime the upper body and the back because you're still going to use that. And a lot of the biggest flaws is, is this is usually the main part that people will break down in their warmup. They think, okay, I'm squatting today, so I'll get on the bike. I'll do some, some air squats and lunges. Then I'll hit the barbell.

Well, you still need to prime your upper body because that's going to hold the barbell. Hold, hold you nice and tight. Keep your mid back a lot very tight. And that's where I see when loads get heavier or exhaustion happens is. The mid back breaks down first in like when you're doing squats or deadlift because either it's not warmed up enough, it's not strengthened enough, it's not the lower body that's breakdown, it's your mid or upper back.

So you really want to still make sure you're warming up those counter movements and then the opposite with like upper body day. If you want to, you know, prime your glutes, your hips, you're still might be staying tight through there. Um, still remaining stable, especially like the, uh, like standing strict press, things like that.

So do some sort of counter movement just to keep the priming going and to make sure you are ready throughout your body. And the last thing is prepare your core. You don't do anything without your core. Uh, unless you're, I mean, even if you're using just those like cable machines, which most garage gym athletes are not, so you're using your core always.

And that's what you need to make sure you're, you're priming your core. So some sort of, you know, nothing too crazy. You can do setups. You can do, um, a, uh, a plank or a. Uh, front leaning rest, uh, knee raises, something like that. Just to make sure you're nice and engaged. Because again, if you get to go under your weight and your core is not warmed up, you're going to be a little bit, a little bit flimsy, a little bit loosey goosey, and you don't want to be.

So this is the four main components. Elevate your heart rate, prime the main focus that you're doing. Counter movement to that prime focus and prepare your core. This is the four key components and we prepare, or we, um, program those into our, uh, warmups every day. That's how I write the programming for like pretty much all the warmups I do for everything.

And. It's going to change day to day and what your focus is. And, uh, if you're on shred track, you'll notice that those warmups are a little bit different because their focus is a little bit different. It's much more, um, hypertrophy based. It's much more, you know, you're really, he really, he's got VD who programs those, he's really pre fatiguing and warming up those movements because when you get into your hypertrophy sets, you want to be nice, primed and ready for your near max effort on a lot of those, uh, movements.

because you're really going to be taxing your muscles there. And so getting into the workout specific stuff is that, um, okay. So you have your four components, but like, how should that matter for the different types of workouts that you're doing? Well, if you're being explosive and dynamic, that's really when you want to go into your warmups, Very, very deliberately and even start working in some of that through your warmup.

So if you start doing your unilateral work with some, uh, lunges, air squats, something like that, and you're going through it and you're nice and warm, then you might need to go back through again and do something explosive, you know, do a kettlebell swing, do a squat jump. You need to really prime being explosive because if you just go to be explosive, even if you're warm, you, you're not going to be, you're not going to be firing on all cylinders, or you might even, I wouldn't say you're not, it might be completely caused for injury, but it's still not going to be prime or, uh, your best effort.

And if you're going for some sort of max effort or a really, really hard effort, then you're going to want to take a bit longer to warm up all of our warmups. We say. That's our block zero where you're just going to take 10 minutes and warm up after your 10 minutes, get into your workout, get in, get to going.

But if you really are doing a max effort, the no max out PR, something very explosive or hard efforts like our IWTs, um, you mentioned, uh, before you might need to take up to 15 minutes just because. Those are such short efforts. It's not going to take too much time out of your, your, uh, your workout, but you really want to put your best foot forward to make sure you are really hitting those intensities, that explosiveness and what you need to do.

And that goes for lifting heavy as well. I didn't, if you notice, I didn't mention any warmup sets. And those four components, because we want to warm, we want to prime the body, prime, priming for the entire workout first, and then you need to go into your own warmup sets for your workout. So you should always, always, always warm up with an empty barbell.

Do your first sets with an empty barbell. I always do. 10 reps with an empty barbell, no matter what movement I'm doing, whether it's deadlift or squat or press, I'm doing 10 reps with an empty barbell. And even like Olympic lifters do that because you really just still need to start from square one and get warmed up and then slowly add a plate and then get your warmups going.

We never program, especially on like max out days, we don't program people's Warm up sets for, for them because everybody warms up differently. Some people will need much more, more sets than others. Uh, it also depends on how much weight you're lifting. I personally need more warm upsets than compared to like my wife.

I just need, really need to get moving and, uh, more, accumulated to the weight as I go up, but I can, I can handle those extra sets. So also sort of knowing yourself, I can handle those extra sets to bet. Just depends on how heavy I'm going that day. If I'm going like 80 something percent, I'm probably doing four warmup sets before I do my first 80 percent set, because I need to do, you know, empty barbell.

I need to add a plate and he had a second plate and I need to, you know, gradually go from there. And then I'm, I feel like I'm pretty much ready. To be lifting at that 80%. So you got to make sure you're going through these intentionally and hat. And you know, that's the beauty of having our warmups all programmed is because you don't have to think about it.

You just go through it real quick and then you go into your warmup sets so that you save on time instead of you get on your bike and then you go, okay, what am I doing next? Oh, I guess I can do this. I can guess I can do this. I mean, sticking to the, like our little parameters, if you write it out ahead of time, or even just think about like, okay, I need to go to my priming thing.

Okay. I need to go to my counter thing. Okay. I need to just, you know, warm up my core and then I go through and then I start my warmup sets. That's sort of how the progression, um, or the mindset you should have with your warmups, especially if you're, um, struggling with warming up or just not feeling that primed.

Now, I also want to talk about. And if you have any niggling type injuries, I will, I always fit up my fitted my, so I have a lot of different injuries here and there, whether it's a hip, um, my shoulder, anything like that. I always go through my complete warmup first. And then, so I'll go through my, my actual, you know, I elevate my heart rate.

I go through all my warmup steps. Once I do that, I'll do my first, usually I'll do my first set. On the empty barbell. And then from there, I will go and I'll smash something or either before or after something like that, I will go and do a little bit of a little bit of dynamic stretching. I might do some, some really deep, um, elevated lunges to really get into my, my hip flexor.

I might smash on a lacrosse ball, whether it's my, my hip, um, my adductors, uh, my foam roll a little bit. I might smash on my, my lats, you know, anything that I need to do for that day. I'll S I'll do that right in bookended with the, uh, uh, Um, barbell, the empty barbell set before I even do any sort of weight because I'm, I'm, I'm warmed up, but I still need to ease into these range of motion.

Then you still need to warm up and prime that. So once I get mobilized, I'll do my empty Barbara said, if I'm still feeling something, I might go attack it again, and then I'll add a plate and then I'll go Go through my, uh, that first warmup set, and then I might do something else, but by then you should be good to go.

So I would put that smashing in between this is smashing mobility or, you know, dynamic stretching, not static stretching, holding a pose for 90 seconds, two minutes that we don't do before our warmups. We've done a couple of, uh, studies on. On why that static stretching isn't great to do before your warmup or before your workouts, but to do it afterwards for actual, uh, increasing, increasing range of motion, but before you still want to stay tight, you still, you still want to increase your range of motion, but that's why we do a dynamic stretching because you still want to move through the, we want to move through the movements, but not have it so elastic so that you can't, uh, contract.

Contract those muscles when you need to. So that's how, um, I go through my warmups. That's how we program our warmups and how we've always told athletes to do it. Um, hopefully you found this somewhat helpful or peek behind the curtain of how we do our warmups. If you don't want to do your program, your warmups, we programmed them for you.

So you can check out our programming at garage, new athlete, but most of you are probably doing some sort of program. So, uh, you know, click So get your warmups in good, hit these four steps, get your warmup sets in, and then tackle those workouts.