Its COLD! What’s a warm-up going to do?
It’s the time of year where some writer or social media influencer will tell you to “warm up properly” before you head out into the cold. Those articles inevitably picture some person in a deep hamstring stretch as their warm up….ugh! Let’s please stop the madness and help ensure you actually understand what IS, and what is NOT happening in a warm up, and most importantly, what you SHOULD do before you go outside and play!
Pre-Workout Hamstring Stretch For the Win? ….NO.
A “warm-up” is about waking up your neuromuscular system so that you can prepare your body for a workout. It gets your brain and muscles to talk. It’s a daily introduction to improve the skill and efficiency in the way you move. Much like your brain-fog lifts after your morning coffee, your body-fog lifts after a proper warm up!
Yes, it’s winter, and for most of us the temps drop outside. But I want to make this clear: the goal of a warm up has nothing at all to do with “blood flow to working muscles to get them supple and loose.” That happens naturally when you move. Moving your body in ANY way will increase the tissue temperature. It’s no secret; if you are cold, and you go outside to run, bike, hike, ski, etc;, your body temperature rises and we often find ourselves shedding layers that seemed so important when cold smacked us in the face walking out the door. And a warm-up has nothing to do with stretching and making your tissues longer. Period.
Sync Your Body + Your Brain
Take home: a warm-up’s purpose is resetting your muscle tone so you can move better! And guess what?! Any type of stability work you do has the same exact purpose over the long term. We are all time-starved but if you do your stability work FIRST, it will give you double benefit to improve your body control for long term success, and ALSO optimize performance in today’s workout.
Put It Into Action
By doing any type of stability work (either MOBO, or anything else you may be doing ) before your true workout you are getting compound benefits in the short and long term. Plus your brain is able to “learn” easier as its fresh and not fatigued.
As far as “what to do,” variety in your warm-ups is best to move multiple ways to build multiple skills. We’ve got a host of routines on our site that build these exact skills. But if you are looking for a quick and dirty, these are our top 3 for full body warm up. If you’d like to see them in action, check out videos for each on the EXERCISES page.
Hip Twist
25 reps each leg
Banded Tippy Bird
3 sets of 10 each leg
Star Squats
3 sets of 5 each leg
Doing something to “warm up” your nervous system is definitely worth your time. This whole routine should take 8-10 min and will ensure you put the best version of yourself into today’s workout.