The Right Warm Up Exercise for the Weights Room

Warm Up Exercise is crucial, especially considering that many athletes would much rather skip it and dive right in .. right? Come on, admit it! I know I sometimes feel like it, and I’ve seen it many times before with my athletes …

Warming up can be boring, and why not use all that precious energy for lifting some serious weights right away?
Well, you got a point there. Using too many warm up reps or sets certainly will take away from the quality of the workout. BUT …

You need to prepare properly for intense lifting with the right warm up!

This Dude warmed up well for sure!

So it becomes obvious that it’s not only the right kind of workout for your training goal that is important, but the right kind of warm up for that specific training session is crucial as well! And how to do that?
Nooooo prob, you’ve come to the right place!

Here’s some good warm ups for the different kinds of workouts

Power: (Speed Strength, 1-6 reps)
4,4,3,2,1,1,1 reps with 40, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 80% of WORKING weight.
So if you’d use 100kg (to keep the maths simple) for sets of triples, that’d be 40, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 80kg for your warm up sets.

Relative Strength: (1-5 reps) and Hypertrophy (6-12 reps)
5,3,2,1,1 reps with 50, 60, 70, 80, 90% working weight.

Strength Endurance: (13-25 reps)
3 x 5 reps, at 50, 70, 80% working weight.
 

Warm up exercises should be specific: it’s usually best to use the same movements!
“The body needs to know two things from the warm up: approximately how heavy will things get, and what is the range of movement (ROM).” Credit: Charles Poliquin

So what that means is that the stationary bike is not exactly the most appropriate warm up exercise for, say, the bench press. If you’re gonna bench press, you should warm up with pretty exactly that same movement. Sure you might use dumbbells to prepare for the barbell press or vice versa, that’s not to big a deal. But it should be basically the same motor pattern, or close to it.

Let’s take a closer look at our Bench Press Example and walk through it together:
Staying with the example of the bench press, say you want to do some 10 sets of 3-5rm (rep max) with 150 kg, that’s relative strength, and you’d warm up something like this:
5 x 75kg, 3 x 90kg, 2 x 105kg, 1 x 120kg, 1 x 135kg.

It also would be a bit of a mistake to do some 25 reps as preparation for say the power snatch. Why?
Ooooff, where to start …
Apart from the fact that high reps like that on a highly technical, structurally challenging high-velocity lift like the power snatch (eeeep — deep breath real quick!!) would lead to breakdown of technique and to a slowing down of tempo/lack of explosiveness –so you’d train to be slow and program mistakes into your nervous system– you’d also generate high levels of lactate, which in turn impedes your ability to access the HTMU’s (high threshold motor units), governing the FT (fast twitch) muscle fibers (Type IIa and especially Type II B), which are just the ones that make you fast and strong. … hope that make sense?
(World Record holder for the longest friggin’ sentence on any blog post, Yaaay!)

Alright that’s all, hope that helps and clarifies some stuff, if you got any questions or are confused (but not about your sexuality, DON’t contact me if you’re confused about your sexuality! Juuust kidding! ) please let me know in the comments section, I will be sure to get back to y’all.

Have a Good One,

Mark

6 Comments

• Sam- Look Like An Athlete says:

  October 12, 2011 at 7:51 AM

  Mark,
  Great warm up exercises here! It is good to show that a warm up consists of performing an active exercise. Often I hear or see people at the gym talk about warming up and proceed to do stretching?

  Good stuff as always. The site looks awesome by the way!

  -Sam

  Reply
  • Mark says:

    October 12, 2011 at 10:01 AM

    Thanks Sam, yeah you know Rusty did that for me and he did the most awesomest job!
    Do you know he spent some friggin’ 8-10 hours on that? And didn’t charge me a dime, I really didn’t expect that, I was ready to pay him big bucks, because it’s obviously so worth it … some guy huh?

    Yeah the warm up: some folks do 5 minutes running or cycling before lifting weights? O they skip it altogether? And it’s so important to prepare and to prevent injury. But then many judt don’t really know hoe it’s done proper.

    So this has hopefully cleared up the “warm-up confusion” for a bit.

    Mark

    Reply
• Yavor says:

  October 13, 2011 at 9:13 AM

  thanks Mark, really appreciate those tech posts. I’ve been training and learning this stuff for 10+ years now and I still learn new things every day.

  Reply
  • Mark says:

    October 13, 2011 at 9:39 AM

    Hey Yavor,

    that’s some compliment, coming from you man!

    Yeah i figured it’s rather important and also stuff I talk about in the gym all day long, so why not post it, too?

    I just hope it’s not too technical for the gym goer … but I think it’s alright.

    Mark

    Reply
• Mark says:

  October 12, 2011 at 7:54 PM

  Hey Tony,

  thanks for the question!

  Hmmm, lesse now … Here’s the 1st thing should definitely be able to do to strip of that lard:

  http://www.tsmethod.com/blog/a-nifty-weight-loss-swimming-routine/

  Then it’s really the question of what you can do with your ankle right now. Can you squat? Deadlift?
  Because then you can try the Canadian National Judo Team’s Lactate circuit: Fasted state, 2-3xweek, here’s the notation:

  A1:Full Squats, 3x12rm, 40X0, 60s.
  A2:Close Chins, 3x12rm, 40X0, 60s.
  A3:Deadlifts, 3x12rm, 40X0, 60s.
  A4:Bench Press or Dips, 3x12rm, 40X0, 180s.

  Do this with the correct dietary intervention and you’ll get stronger, bigger, and lean.

  Otherwise you can try these circuits here (always fasted preferably, and you need to create a calorie deficit of course to drop fat)

  http://www.tsmethod.com/blog/weight-loss-workouts-2-bodyweight-circuits-training-for-fat-loss/

  http://www.tsmethod.com/blog/weight-loss-workouts-3-interval-weight-training-or-fat-burning-weight-training-circuits/

  And if you can’t use the ankle at all, you can do Leg Curls or Glute Ham-Raises, and in this case some leg extensions would be allowed too! If that is so please let me know and I will design a good workout for ya, using these exercises together with some good upper body stuff.

  Hope that helps dude, and don’t give up: yo can always do SOMETHING!

  Mark

  Reply
• Mark says:

  October 16, 2011 at 9:49 PM

  No sweat Tony, more than welcome!

  P.S.
  Please let your friends know!

  Mark

  Reply