Warm ups have notoriously been the forgotten or discarded piece of every gym rats’ workout. I get it, I didn’t do warm ups for a long time and I still have days that I skip warm ups. I might be short on time or just lazy and tired that day and don’t feel like doing it. But warm ups have the potential to level up your workout that much more. So lets get into what a warm up is & why they are important.

The purpose of a warm up is movement preparation. They serve to prepare your body for the movements that you are about to perform and optimize the exercises that follow them. Warm ups increase blood flow throughout your body, increase your heart rate, lubricate and loosen up your joints, and help improve your force production.

A great warm up leads seamlessly into the workout, but they don’t always need to be 100% seamless and perfect. There are a lot of ways to go about creating a good warm up. There is the RAMP protocol, pillar prep, movement prep, and many others. RAMP stands for Raise, Activate, Mobilize, and Potentiate. My warm up approach combines all of the above listed methods of creating a warm up (and most do anyways). 

Let’s start with the RAMP protocol. First off, Raise serves the purpose of raising your heart rate and body temperature through general, often cardio-based movements. Think of the treadmill, bike, stair climber, jumping jacks, or pogos. These typically last around 5 minutes but can be shorter. I find that hopping on a cardio machine can be easy, but it also can be a little more time-consuming than I want it to be. So most of the time, starting with jumping jacks, seal jacks, pogos, or any other type of jump is a good way to get the heart rate up for a minute. Next up is Activate. The purpose of the Activate stage is to actively move your body through a range of motion. Think dynamic stretches. Mobilize has a similar purpose, but I like to think of mobilization as more of a joint-specific warm up component and activation as more of a muscle-specific warm up. Nevertheless, dynamic stretches are great to serve the purpose for both stages. Finally, we have Potentiate. Potentiation is a fancy word for increasing the ability of the muscle. This is the most exercise-specific stage. So if you are working on strength, this stage serves the purpose of increasing the force-production of your muscle so when you hit your top set, your muscle can produce more force and execute the lift more efficiently. An example of this is you performing squat jumps before back squatting or a baseball batter taking practice swings with a weighted sleeve on the bat.

Now, how do we combine pillar prep or movement prep into the warm up? That is easy! As for movement prep, all you have to do is think about the exercises you are going to perform in the workout you are about to do. If you are going to squat, performing squat variations like lunges or body weight squats are great to include in your warm up. You can also thing of the joints you are going to use. So for squats, you would want to focus on the ankles, knees, and hips. Make sure you are going through warm up exercises that are working those joints through their full range of motion. A few of my favorites are adductor rockers, lunge openers, and ankle rockers. These three together hit all three joints!

Pillar prep is also simple and you can include full-body warm ups that engage the core to work pillar prep in. The purpose of including pillar prep is to engage all of the muscles and joints surrounding your core to reduce injury risk and optimize exercise performance. So remember, the core includes all of the muscles and joints that surround and connect to your spine. So when adding in pillar prep movements, there should be movements that address the hips, spine, and shoulders. A few pillar prep exercises are glute bridges, planks, bear planks, and plank walk outs.

A few other notes on warm ups:

• Just because you are hitting legs, does not mean you can ignore your upper body. Warm ups should be specific to the exercises you are about to perform but should include full-body movements.

• You can use warm ups as a way to work on mobility that you may want to target. If you know you have tight hips and you want to improve their mobility, make sure you are working them through their full range of motion during your warm ups. Mobility work does not have to be complicated, time-consuming, or its own separate workout. Use your warm ups to your advantage!

• If you are in a time crunch, still hit a few movement-specific warm ups. It can be 5 body weight squats and then 5 squats with just the bar, but do NOT just hop into your top set and hope for the best (you probably already knew that). Remember that warm ups are not just about optimizing your workouts, they are also there to reduce injury risk so try not to totally discredit them.

• Warm ups don’t always have to be super specific. You can have a basic warm up you follow for every upper and lower body day and tweak it when necessary! Work smarter not harder;)

So this might feel like a lot of info, and it might be overwhelming. So here is a simple, step-by-step break down of how to create your own warm up:

1. Pick 1-2 exercises to raise your heart rate and get your blood flowing. (ex. Rowing, biking, jumping jacks, pogos)

2. Choose 2-3 exercises to prep your pillar. At the very least, do 1-2 exercises that engage your core so it is activated & ready to go for your workout. If possible, add in another 1-2 exercises that open up your pillar as well. (ex. Planks, plank to down dog, push ups, lunge openers)

3. Pick 4-5 dynamic stretches directly working the joints you are about to use. Yoyu can perform general joint-specific stretches and movement-specific stretches for this. (ex. A general stretch might be lunge to hamstring stretch or adductor rockers. A movement-specific stretch might be body weight squats or a split squat.)

4. Do 1-2 exercises that are potentiating your body. These should be the most specific exercises in your warm up. (ex. If you are deadlift, you might do some bodyweight hinges and RDLs with the bar.

And there you go! You just created your own warm up! Warm ups should only last 5-10 minutes and should not be overwhelming or stressful! Hopefully this helped simplify warm ups for you or maybe convinced you to start doing them more. While you might have to take a few minutes to write one out, it is well-worth it.

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