Slayer's Den

01dragonslayer · Sep 12, 2024

Crush Any Workout

The best warm-up will get you physically ready to crush your workout. Get that feeling in under 10 minutes with this pre-workout strategy.

A warm-up is a transition stage from normal activity to athletic activity. The purpose? To optimize performance. Good warm-ups do more than just boost your body temperature. The best warm-up sequences improve overall joint mobility, coordination, and athleticism.

They also increase variety in your workouts, which helps you develop a more well-rounded body – one that’s not just stronger and better looking but also more mobile and athletic. The typical treadmill jog can’t do that.

Try these two general warm-up sequences.

The following sequences involve three components:

Activation Exercises
Mobility Exercises
Potentiation Exercises

You do them in that order because it makes sense to do activation before mobility to improve your neuromuscular control or “joint stability” as you move through the range of motion.

It also makes sense to do the potentiation exercises 60 as the final piece of your warm-up to prime the nervous system for what you’re about to do. We’ll take a deeper dive in the tabs below.

You can do both warm-up protocols pretty much anywhere because they require little space and only one piece of equipment: an NT Loop Mini (Buy at Amazon) 44 or regular mini band.

You should complete these in ten minutes or less once you become proficient, but they may take a bit longer at first as you learn how to perform them.

Remember, this is a warm-up, not a workout. So don’t do so much that you feel tired afterward. You should feel more loose and ready to go!

Lower Body Warm Up

Instructions

Upper Body Warm Up

Instructions
For total-body workouts, simply blend exercises from the two above and do the following exercises back-to-back:

Instructions
What you see here is a version of the RAMP warm-up developed by Ian Jeffreys (1). RAMP stands for raise (body temp), activate, mobilize, and potentiate.

For lifters, I’ve simply eliminated the “raise body temperature” portion because it’s not really needed. Your body temp rises automatically rises while doing the activation, mobility, and potentiation exercises. You get the same benefits while saving time.

Generally, spending more than 10 minutes on a warm-up is probably too long because it takes away from your workout time. And it’s supposed to help your workout, not hinder it.

Want to take a deeper dive? Here’s a quick overview of the three warm-up components and why to do them.

Activation exercises promote the recruitment of key musculature, such as the glutes and rotator cuff, which might improve both the kinematics of movement and the ultimate performance outcome.

However, researchers have investigated the effect of gluteal activation exercises on athletic performance (2-6). The results have been equivocal, with some studies reporting modest increases in performance outcomes regarding things like height jumped and power output. Others found no difference.

That said, other research found that glute activation warm-ups can change the relative muscular involvement, creating greater external rotation of the hip and keeping the knees closer to a neutral alignment. (7)

This lines up with the idea that doing some lower-level strength training exercises for the glutes prior to a workout can facilitate recruitment so that a smaller neural drive may evoke greater force production during movement. This affirms most of my athletes over the years who say they feel “better” and “more ready” after performing the hip and shoulder activation exercises.

Mobility is your ability to move your body freely and easily. It’s related to flexibility because some mobility exercises give you a great stretch. However, mobility is focused on how much controlled range your joints have.

These warm-up sequences include mobility exercises that help you maintain and increase your overall joint mobility, which can improve joint health. As the saying goes, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

The mobility exercises above complement your training for size, strength, and power because they require your joints to move into their end range of motion. In comparison, smart strength training involves avoiding end-range joint actions to maximize safety in handling heavy loads.

Many people find that these mobility exercises also help them squat deeper, deadlift with a straighter back, and perform lifts with more comfort and less restriction.

This involves some power, speed, and agility training when you’re most fresh at the beginning of the workout. This adds a great training benefit by improving athleticism. Also, the intensity helps you perform your lifts closer to your maximal levels. (1)

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