Whenever we have someone new start at the gym, I hear the same thing.

‘Wow, you all have a very thorough warm-up.’

It’s a sense of pride when I hear that. We take great pride in our warm ups, a part of exercise that is neglected by many people.

Most of our members are new to working out, have desk jobs, or are crunched for time. So we make sure our warmups are simple and effective, so that it reduces your risk of injury.

Here’s what a typical warmup looks like.

Light foam rolling of key musculature to promote blood flow. This should be brief (30-60s per muscle group), and non painful.

Active mobility for target joints. After delivering blood to the tissue we’ll put it through an active range of motion, this also gives the brain fresh information about the safe range of motion for the joint, as tissue quality can change day to day. Upward to Downward Facing Dog, Baby Makers with Thoracic Rotations, and Spiderman Lunges are some of our favorites.

Correctives! This is low hanging fruit for anyone who works at a desk, which is a lot of our members. Thoracic Rotations, Bird Dogs and Deadbugs are fantastic here. I had a member say ‘I’m getting REALLY good at Bird Dogs Brandon.’ He meant it as a dig, but that’s exactly the point! Why wouldn’t we want people to get really good at activating their cores? Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to reinvent the wheel with every warm-up. If it works keep using it! Pro athletes do the….exact….same warm-up every day!

Circuit. Here are few ideas for what to add here, we like to keep this at to 3-5 movements, so it doesn’t become overwhelming. Primal Movement have been shown to increase coordination, 10-20 Ft of Duck Walks, Bear Crawls etc. Banded exercises help to wake-up the nervous system, because the resistance changes across the range of motion. Micro-dosing plyometrics. Plyos are great, but people generally don’t need as much as they think they do. Elite Westside power lifters might only be doing 20+ reps per week, so these are great to plug into a warm-up to further ramp up the CNS.

10-15-second Air Bike Sprint. We like to add these in on heavy days, as another driver of the central nervous, but also a diagnostic to gauge where someone is at. If you can regularly crank out 15 watts, but on a given day you’re only at 13, it’s a good indicator that you should down regulate your session. People can still train but should dial back intensity.

This might seem like a lot, but it takes about 12 minutes to get through, sometimes faster as people become more adapted to it (yet another reason to keep a similar structure with your warm-ups).