Effective Warm-ups
Foundational health principle: Exercise/movement
We all know the concept of warming up. We do it for all sorts of things, like warming up an oven to cook a cake, or warming up the car to reduce wear and tear on the engine. So why is the concept of warming up your body for exercise so different?
A proper warm-up for exercise is essential to activate the nervous system and circulatory system, lubricate joints, prepare connective tissues, joints and muscles for movement. While doing a warm-up on a stationary bike or treadmill can be an effective warm-up for a cardio training session, many people assume that doing the same sort of aerobic warm-up for resistance training is also effective.
Resistance training involves specific stress to muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints of the arms, legs and spine. Loads on these structures can be high and require strong activation of the nervous system. While an aerobic type warm-up mentioned above does warm up the body and increase blood flow, the movement patterns are only specific to the joints involved. These may not be the joints that are going to be worked in the resistance training program.
For example, you may have done 10 minutes on the treadmill at about 30-40% intensity. Now you go over to the seated row machine to start your program. You are about to move a weight at about 70-80% intensity and your nervous system is about to experience increased demand. Your warm-up didn’t involve any arm movements and didn’t prepare any of the muscles or other tissues mentioned above. This is going to be an issue for those tissues.
The S.A.I.D. principle
This stands for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand. It means to prepare and train the body for the specific conditions it is going to experience. In relation to your warm-up for exercise think about;
- Movement patterns
- Should mimic the patterns of movement you are going to do
- Intensity level
- Do some lower intensity sets and build up to the heavier sets eg ½ then ¾ of the training load
- The higher the training load of your workout, the more warm-up sets you will need
Examples
Cardio:
A run session of 5 or 10 k’s at 4-4.5 min/km pace.
Warm-up with a few minutes of light jogging, then increase pace to 6 min/km, then 5.5 min/km pace. Do some gentle stretching. Then do your 5/10 k run.
Resistance:
Squat workout of 4 sets of 8 reps @ 90% of 1RM
Do warm-up sets of 1 set of 12 reps @ 50%, then 1 set of 6-8 reps @ 60%, then 1 set of 2-4 reps @ 80%. Then do your training sets.
Summary
An effective warm-up involves preparing the body for the movement patterns and conditions you are going to perform.
It also decreases the chances of injury.
Yours in good health
Brad Corbett
Osteopath
Personal trainer
Holistic exercise & lifestyle coach