We have all seen the people at the gym who have a bag full of floss, bands, balls, rollers, and trigger point gadgets. You would think they have powerpoint presentation and a couple of videos just to get their workout started. Ridiculous right?
Well, I think I have gotten somewhat bitten by this trend. Over the years my warm up has become more and more elaborate. If you are like me, you do a lot of reading on strength and conditioning. If you are also like me, you are very impressionable. I’ll see or read something that looks good, I’ll try it out, and if I like it, I end up adding it to my program.
Ironically, I have been doing so many movements in my warm up that I catch myself completely forgetting some. It’s actually a mental burden just trying to remember what the hell to do. Seriously, the warm up is important, but it should not tax my brain. The only thing I should be spending my grey matter on during that time is getting in the zone to train, not did I forget to do my arm circles.
I used to time my warm up and if I really cooked through the movements, it would take about 12 minutes. Now it has been creeping up to 20 minutes, and again, that’s with continuous motion. Seriously, this is no longer a warm up, it’s conditioning.
With enough being enough the other day, I jotted down all of the movements I was doing. Then I narrowed them down to a list of eight movements that would cover all my bases and just did those. Guess what? I felt great. Within five minutes I was perfectly ready to train. I think the biggest problem is, we have a tendency to think more is better. As we all know, clearly that’s not the case.
So if you think your warm up is getting too long, trim the fat. Find the economy of movements that’s right for you.
HERE'S MY CURRENT WARM UP:
-Overhead Band Press x5 each side
-Bird Dogs x5 each side
-Quadruped Thoracic Rotation x5 each side
-Push ups x10
-RESS x10 each side
-Halo 25 lb plate x5 each side
-45 Degree Back Raise x15
-Band Pullapart x10