A lot of folks here talked about this for many years…
I define it as a transition from whatever lifestyle you lead to the workout.
For instance, a sedentary office worker might really need some stretching and cardio to be comfortable doing a workout. Someone who has a high-stress day might like to do burpees and battle ropes to calm down to focus on the workout. Someone who has been on their feet all day and already got 25k+ steps in might just jump in to ramp-up sets. Some people come in amped to attack the iron without any warmup, but they need a cooldown to get back to socially acceptable.
I think a flexable warmup based on what you need from day to day, paired with a strict workout makes sense.
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Doing a 5-10 min structured bodyweight dynamic warmup, mean a world of difference to me when lifting heavy squats or deadlifts. This both for performance (easier, smoother lifts) and injury prevention (no more cranky knee joints).
When doing other movements or lighter training, the warm up can be significantly shorter, or in a traditional submaximal HIT session it MAY be redundant as the workout is the warmup.
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Oh hey, this is me, and exactly what I do. Cardio with dynamic stretch. Great post, Brant.
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This is a great conversation.
I’m with @Alrightmiami19c and @DoesTheHeavyLifting that, again, we must define what “is” is. It’s less gray than our debates around what constitutes failure, though.
I’m in the camp that warming up is everything on the way to your work sets. I think it was CT that used language like “preparatory sets;” I thought that was pretty well-defined.
I think I like @Brant_Drake’s practical advice the best: be a little flexible, adapt to your life, and do what you need.
What I have seen is our tendency to go all or nothing. So either warming up is super important, so we’ll do this 45 minute ultra-structured thing that leaves no time or desire for the real work, or warming up is stupid, so we’ll walk right in, load the bar, and say goodbye to any remaining joint integrity.
To actually answer a “what do I do,” I like to do 5-10 minutes of cardio, then ramp up probably 4-5 sets of my working exercise, often with a couple jumps or plyo pushups in between those sets. For context, I lift in the morning, but it takes me 20 minutes to get to the gym so I’m relatively awake and unstressed. I pretty much never start with a barbell movement, so that first exercise could also be seen as something of a warmup (or preparatory) itself.
These are fun topics!
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I walk 10 minutes to the gym, and then do some very light dumbbell movements for my rotator cuffs and some twisting for my lower back, and then start the workout with some really light weights progressing quickly up to working sets.
For me, feels essential to “un-stiffening” my body and getting my mind into the right zone.
And then I walk 10 minutes back from the gym, which is a “cool-down” and this actually feels like a bigger win than the warm-up - anyone else find this?
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I haven’t matured past 90s bodybuilding magazines, so I tend to like “finishers” (basically the opposite). What do you notice with/ without cooling down?
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When I cool-down I’m much less susceptible to DOMS and stiffness. My bro-theory is that it helps clear the lactic acid from my system.
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I will pose this question
If there was an emergency where you had to quickly run…i.e. a bear chasing you or something very heavy fell on your wife and you have to lift it to save her life or you are in a fire and you have to carry a 300lb friend out to save
are you all doing warmups
i agree, some form of warmup may be needed in some cases…but, i also believe warmups are overrated
and when do you ever see animals doing a warmup, lol
In a counter point: I don’t care if I tear a hamstring when I’m running from a bear. But I DO care if I tear one when I’m running for fun.
and when do you ever see animals doing a warmup, lol
My dog does this every morning when I wake it up.
I’m with you that I think warm-ups are overrated, and I also want to be ready to go when the moment strikes, but there are a few other variables at play.
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If your dog saw a rabbit when he first woke up…he would not waste time doing that, lol
I feel like that re-affirms my point about how, when the priority is survival, we don’t warm up, but when the priority is not blowing out our muscles, we do…
Even the animals know to limber up after a long period of being sedentary before engaging in strenuous physical activity. But when something bigger is on the line, we take the risk. I’ve seen my dog chase after a rabbit in the middle of pooping. She definitely wants a rabbit.
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The bro-science of my time was about the opposite. We believed that the blood congestion due to a pump in a muscle promoted hypertrophy. We believed that the last thing you wanted to do is accelerate the rate that the blood dissipated out of the pumped muscle.
The last exercise I did in a weight lifting session was to try to pump blood into the last muscle group I trained that day.
Also, this was one of the reasons that, when I did cardio for body composition reasons, I separated the cardio sessions as far from the weight training session as I practically could. Example: Cardio at 6:00am and weight training at 4:30pm. If I needed two cardio sessions the last one would be around 8:00pm.
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This is interesting. Maybe for animals and humans, doing cardio in regular life negates the need for a warmup, instead of compartmentalizing it as “gym time.”
I don’t know if you can preferentially dissipate lactic acid out of muscles whilst retaining blood congestion!
Both approaches make sense within their own logic - one is based on reducing inflammation, one on preserving it…
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“Inflammation” carries far too much negative connotation for me to use it as a description of a muscle pump. I have always viewed a muscle pump as definite positive.
I am on the opposite side of that coin…if you don’t need it for survival then is it needed when exercising
With that in mind, i am NOT saying to just get under 500 lb squat without working up to it…just had clarify that…and i am not sure that i would call those warmup sets either
Using my dog’s pooping example, I definitely choose to void my bowels BEFORE training rather than in the middle of it…
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Can’t argue with that, lol
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Big fan of warmup to dominate performance.
I go as far as doing completely different lifts as a warmup to enhance the main lift of the day at times.
I would also say a great warmup template is Shiek Nassar squat challenge by adding 10# to high rep sets for being well primed to blast out an all out intense squat set!