At some point in your life, you’ve probably been told to spend 5 to 10 minutes on the bike to get the blood moving. Spoiler alert: your blood is always moving.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t warm up, but there are better ways to do it, and you probably don’t have to spend as much time as you think.
The goal of the warm-up is to prepare you for the task ahead, and usually, it looks like this:
– 5 to 10 minutes on the bike
– Static stretches
– Dynamic stretching
– Activation
– First exercise of the workout
Again, there’s nothing wrong with that, except for activations. You don’t need to activate your muscles.
Glutes always seem to get this treatment, “I need to activate my glutes”. If you can stand, then your glutes are active. Let’s move away from this. Anyway…
We can do a lot better.
The issue with that is it might take you 15 to 30 plus minutes to get all of that done, which is time-consuming and doesn’t prepare us for the workout ahead.
The banded glute bridge won’t prepare us for the demand of a heavy squat.
Do you know what will prepare us for a heavy squat? Squatting! The same exercise that you’ve included in your workout.
What’s wrong with starting our warm-up at the sight of where we’re going to start our workouts? We can tell a lot more about how the movement is going to feel by performing the same movement that we’re going to do.
So what I’m trying to say is that we can save a lot of time and achieve effective warming up by doing similar movements and then working towards your workout sets.
Let me give you an example of what I suggest:
Instead of doing:
– 2 to 3 sets of the same stretch
– 2 to 3 sets of a different stretch
– 2 to 3 sets of some banded exercises
– Then going to work out
Try this:
Go straight to the squat rack, start with just the bar.
Do a set with the bar and perform other exercises similar to the squat if needed, so it will look like this:
A1: Squat with the bar
A2: Split squat
A3: Hip airplane
That’s just one set. Before you do the second set, add a little more weight (intensity)
If you’re feeling good, reduce the other movements and keep increasing the intensity; if not, then keep them in until you feel comfortable or get towards your working set.
You see the difference there; there’s an instant intensity progression with your warm-up, and that will save you a lot more time and ultimately prepare you better for the workout ahead.
