Performing a proper warm up prior to any physical activity is a crucial step to not only maximizing your performance but also proactively helping with injury prevention. With such wide-ranging and tangible results, why are warm up’s often performed halfheartedly, focused on areas that are unnecessary, or neglected entirely? Let’s dive in.

 

 

Why Warm Up?

The short answer is that ‘cold tissue’ is easily damaged. You could even refer to tissue that was not ‘warmed up’ as brittle – which may result in some pretty significant injuries (see: strains & sprains).

If you just jump into an activity without any sort of build-up, you risk putting unnecessary stress – both internally and externally – on to your body. Here is a quick analogy that may help shine a light on the importance of this:

Imagine if your vehicle did not gradually increase speed to reach 80 kilometers per hour and instead was instantaneously moving at 80 kilometers per hour. Aside from that being pretty cool, it would be very hard on your vehicle. Not just on the engine, but the body and tires of the vehicle as well. While the speed chosen in this analogy may seem extreme (as no real person would be moving at speeds of 80 kilometers per hour) the exaggerated speed makes it easier to understand my point.

In the previous scenario you can picture the engine as your heart, and the body or tires as your soft tissue (and I suppose skeleton / supporting structure, depending on what you consider the “body” of the vehicle). That is to say that you need progression for things to function properly, let alone optimally.

 

Research Proven Benefits:

Everything found below is to ultimately say that your overall performance / ability will be enhanced when you do a proper warm up – but let’s put that into a compact list:

— increases tissue extensibility (leading to flexibility and mobility improvements)

— increased tissue excitability (respond quicker and stronger to stimuli)

— increased mental focus & promotes positive thoughts (essentially getting you more invested and “in to” the activity that will follow)

— enhanced aerobic function

— reduces post-activity soreness

— helps prevent tissue damage (i.e. tearing)

 

What is a Proper Warm Up?

A proper warm up can be summarized as: low-intensity movements meant to increase your heart rate, as well as localized blood flow to muscles or specific areas of the body.

In knowing how to do a warm up as described just above, as well as what your activity or sport will be afterwards then you have the answer to how you should be warming up before hand. This is because it should be the same movements but in their most basic form.

---

Think about the sport of soccer: the activity here is simply running. If you are wondering about kicking or jumping, well then you are still primarily using your lower body. This points to your lower body being the target area in need of a thorough warm up beforehand. The real benefit of focusing on a specific area is that it will then prepare that specific region or muscles for the more intense work to follow (i.e. muscle contraction, joint movement, etc).

A big thing to note about focusing on ‘one area’ of your body is that this does not mean that the rest of your body is neglected. Your body as a whole will get benefits with every warm up because of your increased heart rate and incorporation of your core to dynamically stabilize yourself.

Whether you are still thinking about soccer or are now thinking about running (let’s say long distance running for a 5 kilometer route): you should start with simply walking around for a few minutes before hand. If you want to be thorough you could do a brisk walk, making it easier on yourself to transition into a jog. The progression here is really easy to see; you are slowly priming your muscles and other soft tissues for a specific task / activity to come soon.

---

In almost almost every situation the above rules hold true. But research has shown more recently that a dynamic warm up is the best way to go. This is especially apparent with athletes. These dynamic movements are still basic, but they will often incorporate a second movement (or series of additional ones) that work on a different plane of motion as well as the initial one. An example of this could be lunging with a rotation (click for example video). Doing circular movements with your arms, or swinging your legs are two additional examples of dynamic warm up movements as well.

The leg swinging could be placed into or replace that walk → jog sequence that we described above (personally, I would add it at the beginning before even starting to walk around).

If this reminds you of ballistic stretching then you deserve a gold star, but these movements are often less intense or explosive than true ballistic stretching. If you are now thinking about other types of stretching such as static or intermittent and wondering why I have not mentioned those yet, then allow me to explain why it is inadvisable to be doing these as a warm up or during your activity:

 

Why should I not use stretching as a warm up tool?

Stretching, other than ballistic, has been shown to be counter productive when done before an activity. This is because it is so effective at loosening the tight fibers within your muscles. When you are about to engage in an activity or perform a specific set of movements, do you really want your tissues loosened or do you want them to be taut and springy; allowing better actions and reactions? The quick answer is that loose tissues do not perform even close to how well their taut and springy counterparts do.

Think about two 100 meter dash runners; one static stretches beforehand while the other uses dynamic movements as their warm up. Scientifically, the one who did the static stretching will have a 5% (and potentially beyond) reduction of functional ability than they had prior to stretching. This means that within the muscle fibers, static and intermittent stretching is having a fatiguing effect while other movements (such as dynamic ones, as outlined earlier) would have an engaging or exciting affect to them.

 

How Do You Know When to Stop?

Remember that the purpose of a warm up is to prepare you for your activity / performance; NOT to fatigue you. There are a few basic indicators that you can still look for however:

— increased heart rate

— increased mental focus (more alert)

— light perspiration (note: emphasis on ‘light’ – if you are sweating as much as an actual activity then you are no longer just doing a warm up)

 

In Conclusion:

You now know how to identify when and how to warm up properly, while also knowing when to stop… but I also know that some of you will still want me to provide some sort of basic guide. I cannot reiterate enough that there is no cookie cutter routine that people will be able to follow, as each persons needs and goals are different. However if you were to twist my arm, these are what I might suggest to an individual:

→ Take a 3-5 minutes walk. Heck, walk around briskly if you want to really feel alive.

→ Do jumping jacks. Refer back to the “how do you know when to stop” section above. Doing this for up to 5 minutes will work wonders, but 3 or 4 sets of 30 seconds should be sufficient for most people.

→ Skip at a mild to brisk pace. I see a lot of professionals recommend 5-10 minutes for this as an adequate warm up, but I personally think this time is creeping a bit too much beyond warm up territory. I would prefer a 3-5 minute range, like the walking noted earlier.

→ Some people will suggest animal movements, as an excellent warm up. I personally would consider these as a part of a conditioning routine, but there is no harm in trying them out! Examples would be crab walking, inchworms, or spider crawls. Just know that there is a fine line between warming up, and doing a true workout with these movements!

→ If you are doing weight training routine at the gym, simply do a bodyweight version of that specific movement as a primer set (before your usual amount of sets, with the same amount of reps). You could also just do this with a very small amount of weight. For example, if you normally squat with 180 pounds then you could just use the bar on its own (generally the bar will be 45 pounds).

Alternatively (or additionally) you could add swinging movements to make this a dynamic warm up. To give an example, you could be doing arm swings or arm circles to warm up your shoulders, chest, and arms.

It may also be wise to slowly work up in weight with each successive set, or adding additional primer sets leading up to your usual weight. But that is getting a bit off topic, as that is leaving the realm of just a warm up.

---

Be safe, work hard, and have fun!

I will now leave you with some final summarized wisdom from Ido Portal: if you cannot properly move yourself, then you have no business attempting to move something else.

Feel free to message me with questions about anything found in this post. I am also almost done a post on how to do a proper cool down as well, so I will add that link here when it has gone live!