It depends on your goals. At minimum you need to raise your body temperature slightly and a brief (5-10 min) cardio workout will do that. Then you need specific warmups for your major lifts.
Beyond that you should do whatever you consider important. If you are trying to get ripped like lordstorm, some sprints might be in order. If you are trying to maintain conditioning you might do something like the Crossfit warmup. Check their site. if you are trying to get better at olympic lifts there is another warmup on the Crossfit site that has some basic drills to practice.
As Dan John says “The warm-up is the workout” and “If it’s important, do it every day.”
What I do is a short body weight circuit consisting of squats, inverted rows, pushups, situps and back extentions.
Maybe a brief cardio, but I would warm up by doing a combination of hang/cleans 3-5 reps plus a push press 3-5 reps plus a squat behind the neck 3-5 reps. Do 4-5 sets of the combo.
If you workout in the AM I would suggest anything that gets you primed, not necessarily have to get a sweat going, just to loosen up the entire body. DB Clean and press for 10 reps real light but not pink dumbbell light and you’re set to go. The first set of each exercise will further warm up the worked area. If you workout at night you should be warmed up by end of day and I would hit the weights as usual again the first set will be kind of a warm up anyway. I would be hesitant on your choice of shorter rest periods AND forced reps. One or the other sparingly, every other week or so. The squats done every other day will take their toll.
I think what warm up is suppose to accomplish is the following:
raise body temp and get the nervous system firing (jumping rope, body weight squats, jogging, etc.)
get joints lubricated through active joint mobility exercises (arm circles, vinyasa yoga (going from one pose to another), fire hydrant circles, etc.)
get muscles ready for action and supple with active stretching (high knee raises, ape walks, should dislocations, etc.)
static stretch only opposite major muscle group than one first being worked to allow for full range of motion on lifts (stretch quads if working hamstrings first, stretch pecs if working back first, etc)
Do some power/speed strength work for body part being used, imagine this has to do with the nervous system, not sure (box Jumps, med ball throws, light dynamic bench presses, etc.)
warm of set of first body part being used, seems like a stretching lift would be appropriate (lat pull down, pec fly) at a low % of 1rm.
There are a couple good dvds on the subject, Magnificent Mobility from Cressey and Robertson, DeFranco’s super strength, and pavel tsatsouline’s Super joints. You actually should be able to find a bunch of articles about warm up on this site written by professionals
I know this seems like a lot , but really all can be accomplished in about 12 minutes, just of few of each should do. not trying to make your warm up the workout.
Please note, I’m just some guy with a keyboard, but from what I’ve read this seems to be what you should be trying to accomplish with a warm up, if not exactly the correct reasons why :). Also, I think the first three items are by far the most important.
[quote]Jetric9 wrote:
Maybe a brief cardio, but I would warm up by doing a combination of hang/cleans 3-5 reps plus a push press 3-5 reps plus a squat behind the neck 3-5 reps. Do 4-5 sets of the combo. [/quote]
I do a lot of complexes and what I call set 0 in my log is whatever complexes routine I’m doing that day for 1/2 my target reps(4 normally) with bodyweight To get the blood flowing and get my body into the groove of the lifts.
I also use the Lazy Mans Guide To Stretching article before every workout and have noticed huge improvements in mobility from it but I never stretched before workouts before so it might just be me. Between these two I’m usually all loosened up and ready to go when I get done.
I wouldn’t sweat it too much. A brisk jog, some joint mobility exercises, and a few dynamic stretches are all I do.
What concerns me more is that you have no overhead pressing exercises in your program.
Why haven’t you included military press, dumbbell shoulder press, Arnolds, or some other type of shoulder press exercise?
Do you have a shoulder injury that precludes these movements?