How to Warm Up Properly?

Whether you are lifting weight, bodybuilding, hiking, jogging or playing sports, without proper warm up not only you can get hurt but you will most likely waste your session. Then the question comes, what is proper warm up?

Typically, when you go to the gym you may have been advised to get on cardio equipment such as treadmill, bike, or elliptical for 10-15 minutes. Then the you or trainer will take out foam roller and you may lay on it for 5 minutes then start squatting with few plates on the bar.

This is a problem and waste of time with what you've done and most likely waste of your training session because the body is not properly prepared for the exercise that you will be performing.

Here are 3 things you need to have in your warm up.

1. Elevate heart rate

2. Mechanical Preparation

3. Load Preparation

First is elevate your heart rate. This does not have to be on cardio equipment (ideally avoid it). You can walk around with arm circles, start practicing some of the movement you are planned to do in your workout, use battle rope, carry lighter weights and so on. Let's say the workout today will be squat. Then you may want to start with walking lunges, jog, light weight farmer's carry, etc. Exercises you choose for warm up should help increase heart rate and also start preparing the muscles that will be used in squat or whatever exercise you will be doing. Obviously, there are so many variations but the main focus initially is to increase the heart rate by pumping more blood throughout the body.

Second is mechanical preparation. After you have elevated your heart rate, move onto actual squat without any weight and prepare your body for proper squat technique. If the joints are stiff with your squat, then you may use foam roller and/or stretching to increase your mobility so your body is ready to perform proper squat.

Third is load preparation. I will never start with weights on the bar for squat. Let's say I'm working on 225lb squat for 5 reps today. Then I will always start off with just a bar (45lb), for at least 1 set of 10 repetitions. Then use 40%, 50%, 60%, 70% of the final load, up to 225lb for 5 repetitions each with proper rest in between. What this does is prepare the muscle and nervous system for load increase.

Now, example I've used above was for squatting. Depending on what you will be doing, how to warm up will be different but should always follow those 3 points.

Here is warm up suggestion for someone doing hike. For heart rate elevation I will use marching, speed walk, and walking lunges. This will get your heart rate up and start loosening up the muscles and mechanically prepare the joints that will be used throughout the hike. It is also ideal to mobilize the ankles, hip flexors, neck and shoulder blades especially if you are carrying sack. Load preparation for hike will be slight different. Start off the hike with slower pace and work up to your ideal pace. While you are hiking, slope, elevation will change cause more stress towards the muscles. Therefore, instead of changing the load as you might do with weight lifting, you should gradually increase the pace as you start the hike.

Initially, designing warm up may be challenging but what you want to do is visualize what you will be doing in activity you are about to do. Depending on what you will be doing, some of the mechanical and load preparation may not be needed.

Kota Shimada