Exercise Education – The Warm Up

Never underestimate or overlook the importance of a dynamic warm up before training. The warm up is there to prime your muscles and nervous system for peak performance. Finding the balance between not doing too much and doing too little during your warm up is also important.

It should be dynamic, cover multiple joints, increase blood flow and increase muscle temperature. A warm muscle can contract quicker whilst reducing the elastic resistance in the muscle. This is good, very good, especially for resistance training. This will reduce the risk of injury and allow you to perform better during your session.

Bowling into the gym Conor McGregor style and jumping straight under a barbell is a sure-fire way to leave with a back injury or muscle strain.

It is important to address mobility through the ankles, hip, thoracic and shoulders. Covering these areas becomes hell of a lot more important when you spend 8 – 12 hours a day slumped or hunched in your chair staring at a computer screen. Your quality of life would vastly improve doing this even if you didn’t step foot in a gym. You would be able to move a whole lot better which most of the general population cannot do.

I take my clients through a dynamic warm up before every session so much so it becomes ingrained. Starting on the ground progressing to standing, most of the content in the video is my ground work which would last between 6 to 8 minutes and following on from that it would lead into some single leg lunges for example.