The Painful Truth about Trainers: Should You Warm Up Before Working Out or Not?

To warm up or to skip the warm up- this is the question! A question, that provokes as many answers as many people you ask.

You know that I have plenty experiments with working out and nutrition. I’ve tried a lot of things and I’ve made a bunch of mistakes, then I’ve tried to fix the consequences. Finally, after I knew what doesn’t work I got to a point when I realized what actually works.

One of my missions with my blog is to save you all the pain and disappointments and focus your attention towards what really works. Then the choice to either trust me or not is completely yours.

When it comes to warming up, I’ve tried a lot of different “strategies”- from the typical warm up on the treadmill, through the static stretching, to never warming up before a workout and directly getting busy with the weights.

If you need to, try it yourself, but I will be quick to warn you that none of the “strategies” listed above works.

The utopic idea about working out without a warm up is a good thing- they claim that you should be always prepared for the unexpected. Probably if a dinosaur is chasing you around town, you will be forced to mobilize your full physical potential, without having to turn to the dinosaur and scream in his face: “Hold on, buddy! I need to warm up first! “

Truth is that we live in a world, which is a lot different than what it used to be or what it will be in the future. If in the past, people really needed to be ready for great physical feats and if they needed to be always ready for the unexpected and able to reach their full physical potential instantaneously, today this is a privilege of few.

Why?

In the past, the daily life of people had different demands on their bodies and physical abilities. If you spend your whole day working on the field or in the yard, if you walk all day, reach down to gather something, or reach up to pick something, lifting different objects, then you are using your body all the time according to what it is created to do- move.

When you live in a society, like ours, when even taking a flight of stairs is considered a huge feat and many would rather take the elevator; a society where our work is forcing us to sit all day long, then our body is not ready for instantaneous, great physical feats- especially when it comes to lifting weights.

Our contemporary life, led us to a state of being where most people are extremely tight; they lack full ROM and it interferes with proper body movement.

I want you to remember one thing and it is that the difference between an injury free workout and a workout that has a higher risk of injury is your ability to keep your body in neutral position. Many people don’t even have an idea what this means. Often times, when I explain people how to stand and sit correctly, they stare at me in confusion and tell me that this posture is extremely unnatural. Actually it is completely natural. The thing is that we diverted from what is natural and we focused on what is common- which is rarely a personification of what is right.

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By going to the gym, and being the typical contemporary person, with a job which requires to sit in a chair all day long, there is a big chance that you have a tilted posture, which is way off form a neutral position.

This means, that if you immediately start lifting heavy weights, you are voluntary asking for an injury and a movement pattern, which in the long term is going to slowly but methodically ruin your health and the proper function of your body.

It would be better if you take some time to prepare your body for the workout. What would this mean? This means that you should help your body to reposition itself, in a manner that will let it get in a neutral position. This means that there must be a purpose behind your warm up- not just a static stretching or a pointless waste of energy on a cardio machine! PURPOSE!

I am a fan of dynamic warm ups- such, which is a combination of mobility, stability, exercises which activate the muscles, which we fail to use in our daily activities- back muscles, glutes and abs; exercises which will help you release the tight muscles- chest, trapezoids and hip flexors.

By activating those muscles, you will remind them that they should work and that they have functions to perform. By releasing the tight muscles and activating those that are kind of sleepy, you will allow your body to reach the balance, which is the base of a neutral posture.

Then, when you transition to the main part of your workout, your body will start from a position, where the load is stressing your muscles, not your joints or ligaments.

And even if there are athletes who are in a god shape and have a well-functioning body, the no warm up model might work, but this is not a reason to spread the myth about working out without warming up. We could not allow to make assumptions, which are based on exceptions. What is valid for the minority, is rarely applicable about the majority!

Personally, I work with people, whose daily life has nothing to do with sport and most of the time they are physically inactive. If I force them to start a workout without warming up, I am putting their body and health at a higher risk- something I wouldn’t allow myself.

I use workouts, as a tool to teach people how to move their body, how to activate it and feel it better. I use workouts, as a mean to help people, in controlled conditions in the gym, to practice proper movement patterns and then transfer them in their daily activities, so they could move pain and injury free,

With enough practice, everybody could work to reach as close as possible to the ability to use their full physical potential instantaneously. The things is that it takes time; smarter approach; analyzing your weaknesses and finding the proper method to correct your movement flaws.

Do not fool yourself into training without a good warm up and without preparing your body.

After all the choice is YOURS. My advice is to warm up with purpose. I warm up because I do not have time to be injured, but I could take 10-15 minutes to warm up for my workout.

It’s your choice!

On Sunday I made my first “steps”of handstand walking! I am so happy and I once again realized that a person could achieve everything, when he sets his mind to do it!
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And one picture from yesterday 🙂