Get in touch
Get in touch
logotype
Correct Warm-up

Correct Warm-up

April 1, 2022

Surely you know that before you start training, you need to warm up properly to prevent injuries. But to warm up effectively for weight training, you need to warm up both your joints and the muscles to be worked. A proper and complete warm-up for weight training should also aim to increase strength!

JOINT, TENDON AND LIGAMENT WARMING

This warm-up prevents injuries (muscle strains, even sprains) and is carried out through wide movements of the limbs as well as controlled stretching of muscles, tendons and ligaments.

The basic movements are:

• rotating arms and shoulders (for warming shoulders);
• rotating the forearms (to warm up the elbows);
• rolling the fists (to warm up the joints of the hands);
• pelvis rotation (to warm up the lower back);
• trunk rotation (to warm up the back area as well as the back);
• flexion (for controlled stretching of tendons and ligaments of the legs);
• bending the trunk from the legs and touching the ground with the hands (to warm up the lower back).

 

Regardless of the type of workout, it’s important to warm up your whole body properly, because all the exercises you perform will use either your balance or your back or arms as a secondary muscle group, and that means you’re indirectly working these 2 muscle groups as well.

This heating should not take more than 5 – 10 minutes. When you finish it, you should move on to phase 2 of the warm-up, and here I mean warming up the muscle groups you are going to train so that they are able to put in as much effort as possible.

JOINT, TENDON AND LIGAMENT WARMING

You may say there is no such thing, but you’re wrong, and it won‘t take you more than 5 minutes to convince yourself of that.

Principles to follow:

• the order in which you warm up different muscle groups is as follows: warm up one group, train it, then warm up another group and train it; don’t warm up both groups at first, then work them immediately one after the other;
• No matter how many exercises you do on a muscle group, that group will warm up using a general exercise, and will warm up only once, not before each exercise;
• when you warm up, do exactly this: warm up! Don’t exhaust yourself! Don’t use heavy weights that use up your heating energy.

Effective warm-up Let’s say you‘re getting ready to work your chest. In this case it‘s good to warm up using a general exercise that works all the chest muscles, and here I recommend the exercise împinsthrust chest from a straight . Take as a reference the weight you usually use for this exercise, which, to make the following calculations easier, let’s say is 100kg (the weight of the barbell is also taken into account).

To warm up effectively, you need to do chest thrusts from a straight plane in a series of reps with different weights. Each set you will do with a weight that is set as a percentage of your target weight. The benchmark weight is the weight you normally use to perform that exercise (in our case 100kg). The warm-up sets are:

• 50% – 12 repetitions (so 50kg in our case);
• 50% – 10 repetitions (so 50kg in our case);
• 67% – 6 repetitions (so 67kg in our case);

These first 3 series were the warm-up series for the muscle group. Continue with 2 series to get the muscles used to the increasing weight as follows:

• 82% – 3 repetitions (so 82kg in our case);
• 93% – 1 repetition (so 93kg in our case); you read correctly, one repetition; I know you can do more, but not now; so not 2, 3 or 4 repetitions, but one repetition.

Now you can start doing the normal series, using 105kg weight, instead of the 100kg you used to use. Yes, 105kg, because this muscle warm-up technique will allow you to increase your strength by a minimum of 5% over the strength you would get if you warmed up superficially or used another warm-up method!

 

NEXT

10 Tips to Start Working Out