WARM UPS
We understand that warm ups are a crucial part of maintaining consistent and healthy training. A suggested warm up is provided for the daily Dad Wod each day. Here are some other quick and effective warm up protocols and examples that you can implement into your daily training.
5 COMPONENTS OF AN EFFECTIVE WARM UP
- Gradually increases heart rate and moves blood around the body
- Activates key muscle groups via dynamic movement and/or stabilisation exercises
- Prepares and mobilises joints
- Takes the body through a full range of motion
- Develops or prepares necessary skills & movements for the training session
How do we do this quickly and effectively?
4/5 of the above critical components can be achieved quickly through a GENERAL warm up. This means a warm up that isn’t necessarily specific to the session you are doing. This only needs to last 5-6 minutes but can last for 8-10 if you have the extra time.
The best way to increase blood flow is to move as much of the body as possible. The easiest and lowest impact way of doing this is through cardio: walk, run, bike, row, ski, skip etc. This should be the first component of your warm up. Start gently and gradually increase intensity.
Muscle Activation + Joint Preparation/Mobility and Range of Motion can all be achieved through bodyweight or very light weight movements. The bigger & more compound the movement (eg. the more of your body it uses), the more bang for your buck you are going to get. Think movements such as Air Squats, Lunges, Inchworm Push-ups, Burpees, Good Mornings, Light Kettlebell Swings or Dumbbell movements that include a large range of motion eg. snatches, clean & jerks etc.
You can mix and match these as little or much as you like but as a general rule if you can include a cardio movement + 2-3 of the movements listed above and create a circuit that gradually increases in intensity you are going to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time.
One of my favourite ways to do this is an EMOM, some example include:
EMOM x 6:
Odd min: 45 sec row/bike
Even: 10 Air Squats + 5 Inchworm Push-ups
Or
EMOM x 6:
Min 1: 45 sec of skipping/double unders
Min 2: 15 Russian KB Swings
Min 3: 10 Burpees
You can make this longer if you like eg. 8-10 minutes, and insert almost anything into this format and it will be effective. The key thing is that you start gently and gradually ramp up the intensity, range of motion and loading.
From here you can then move into more a specific warm up. This stage will take care of the other key component: preparing the necessary skills for the training session.
Once your body is warm, this part can happen pretty quickly, most of the time in 5-10 minutes at most.
Follow a similar approach and look to increase the intensity and loading gradually over 2-3 rounds in a small circuit. The idea here should be to gently touch on the components of the training session without over doing the volume.
Let’s take a workout with Power Cleans, Wall Balls and Pull-ups for example.
You might do a general warm up of:
EMOM x 6:
Odd: 45 sec on a machine of choice
Even: 10 Air Squats + 10 Hollow Rocks
Followed by a specific warm up of:
3 rounds:
3-5 Power Cleans (starting with an empty bar and increasing weight each round)
5-10 Kipping Swings in rounds 1&2 but a few pull-ups in round 3
3-5 Wall Balls
In total this warm up would take you approximately 10-12 minutes and have you adequately warm and prepared for the workout to come.
Could you make this even shorter? Yes. Anything is better than nothing, and if you 30 minutes to warm up and workout, consider even just 5 minutes to prepare.
One of my favourite ways to get very warm very quickly is what I call the 20/20/20 warm up. It is 3 minutes long!
3 minutes on a machine of your choice
20 sec easy/slow
20 sec medium pace
20 sec @ fast pace (build on your fast pace each round so that round 3 is a 90-95% effort)
Follow this up with a few reps of each movement and you will be pretty good to go in about 5 minutes! You may need slightly longer on heavier/more technical days but this is a fantastic starting point for someone who is REALLY tight of time.
If you don’t have access to machines, do the 20/20/20 warm up with 3 movements and do a minute of each
Air Squats, then Sit-ups, then Burpees
Do the first 20 seconds slow, pick up the pace in the middle and then sprint the last 20 sec of each movement.
What about warming up for strength work and Olympic Lifting?
Follow the same protocol: general warm up, then move into a more specific warm up.
The 20/20/20 warm works fantastically in correlation with a quick barbell warm up for some Olympic Lifting.
Try to think about what is required of the lift you are about to undertake. Eg. If it is a back squat session, it would make sense to include some air squats and possibly some inchworms or Russian KB swings to warm up to help activate the core, hips and posterior chain whilst taking the body through the range of motion it is about to undertake with heavy weight.
Let’s take a 5 x 5 back squat session for example:
General warm up:
EMOM x 6:
Min 1: 45 sec on a machine of your choice
Min 2: 45 sec of air squats @ steady pace
Min 3: 45 sec of Russian KB swings @ steady pace
Specific Warm Up, completed EMOM:
10 x Empty Bar Back Squats
5 @ light weight
3 @ heavier weight
2-3 @ heavier weight
2-3 @ perceived opening set weight
Here are some examples of Olympic Lifting Empty Barbell Warm Ups that take just 3-4 minutes:
Snatch
5 x Muscle Snatches
3-2-1
Power Snatch
Overhead Squat
(Complete as an unbroken set)
- Rest as needed, then -
3-2-1
High Hang Squat Snatch
Snatch Balance
(Complete as an unbroken set)
- Rest as needed, then -
3 x 3 Position Snatch
(1 x high hang, 1 x hang, 1 x from floor/mid shin)
Clean & Jerk
3-2-1
Muscle Clean
Strict Press
(Complete as an unbroken set)
- Rest as needed, then -
3-2-1
Power Clean
Front Squat
Push Press
(Complete as an unbroken set)
- Rest as needed, then -
3 sets:
1 High Hang Squat Cleans + 1 Jerk
3 sets:
1 Hang Squat Clean + 1 Jerk
3 sets:
1 Squat Clean + 1 Jerk
You could do the above warmups for power versions of the movement by removing the squats if so desired (eg. for the snatch balance you might just do a snatch grip push jerk) or you could remove the jerk if just doing cleans.
From here, you could quickly progress though a couple of quick building sets in an EMOM format up to your starting weight for the session.
What If I am doing multiple pieces in one session? eg. Dad STRENGTH + DadWOD + DadBOD
If following more than one of our programs daily, and all in one session, it would be wise to follow a general warm up to start the session, however, you will more than likely not need to repeat this between each piece. You can move directly into specific warm up for each piece. Often, this can be quite short and as little as a couple of reps of each movement as we do our best to pair similar movement patterns across our programs to allow for a more fluid training experience.
Where this could potentially be different is if you are playing catch up or cannot do the same schedule that we have programmed. Eg. You might only have 20 mins to workout one day and want to catch up on the strength work on another day. Keep this in mind when preparing for your session.
If stacking programs and looking to reduce warm up time, also consider starting with Cardio Club if it is programmed for that day, or doing the daily workout before the lifting, as this will often prepare and warm up the body significantly before undertaking heavy loaded exercises etc.
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