It's Just A Matter of Time Before it Gets You!
If you are pushing yourself, what you do (or don't do) will eventually lead to an injury!
It could be something minor such as a grade 1 muscle pull, or something serious like torn quadriceps, ruptured disc, or a torn ACL.
Regardless, they all put the breaks on your training, and that's the last thing you want if you're serious about packing on the beef!
Don't be too alarmed though. By incorporating a proper warm-up into your routine, you'll not only reduce your chances of getting injured, but your posture will improve, and without injuries, you'll be far ahead in your training while everyone else is sitting back watching until they heal up.
Why you need to Warm Up
We are adaptive mechanisms. But whether you like it or not, our ability to adapt -- which evolved over thousands of years, is to help us survive, not look buff.
Strength training produces high levels of mechanical tension in the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones. Combine these high levels of tension with the goal of building bigger muscles and you have relatively high levels of tension for prolonged periods of time.
What does this give us? Increased size of the contractile proteins (sarcomeric hypertrophy) as well as increased fluid accumulation inside the muscle fibre (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy), improved tendon and ligament strength, along with improved neural efficiency.
So where's the bad?
Even with a completely balanced training program, muscle tissue still loses its extensibility with strength training, developing adhesions, which produces muscle length/tension relationship issues. And at the heart of the problem is shortening and stiffening of soft-tissues.
This happens as I mentioned even WITH a balanced program. But what are most of you doing? Lots of bench press, lots of leg press, lots of leg extensions and leg curls.
You're using less than full-range movements, and very likely not getting your core temperature adequately increased before getting into your training.
Couple all that with any previous mobility limitations, movement compensation patterns, and further increases in training load and volume and eventually you exceed the physiologic limits of the soft-tissues.
Where does that leave you?
Ever see a penguin walk? If that doesn't scare you enough into doing a proper warm up.. maybe the reaction you get from having to ask someone in the gym shower to pick up your soap bar will!
Now that we're on the same page... that is... we don't want an injury... here's what's involved in preventing injury through warm-ups.
General Warm-Up (GWU)
- increases core temperature
- increases peripheral heart blood flow (flow of blood to the heart muscle itself)
- increases production of synovial fluid to lubricate the joints
- improves extensibility of soft tissues
Specific Movement Preparation (SMP)
- soft-tissue work
- dynamic stretching (before exercise)
- activation work (before and after exercise)
- mobility drills (before and after exercise)
- exercise specific warm-up sets (before strength training work sets)
- static stretching (after exercise)
Before strength training or conditioning workouts, you'll have both GWU and SMP work, and after you'll have some SMP work as well. You'll also need to do some daily SMP work as well.
More for you to learn?
Yes!
Think it's a pain in the ass and that you don't have time?
Sorry... but that's a load of crap!
Might it mean you have to stop reading the paper or magazines while you're training and actually engage yourself in your workouts?
Absolutely!
Ask any of my athletes and they'll tell you straight up, the time it takes each week in total is just a little over an hour, but it can save you weeks or months of lost progress that you get from an injury.
When does a proper warm-up NOT apply to you? There are some conditions.
If you do this at the gym...
Or this...
In general, any wearing of cheap knock-offs of expensive designer sunglasses, with headbands, talking on your cellphone and spend more time looking at yourself in the mirror than you do training, then by all means, please ignore all this, and hopefully injuries will keep you out of the gym so the rest of us can train!
Also, if you're out in the spotlight sometime and you ever do this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJTb991H2h0
Forgetting all about the hot girl in your arms in favour of flexing your muscles for the cameras like this guy, then you can forget about doing the warm-ups. You'll probably get hit by a car long before your bad form and lack of warm-ups ever hurts you.
So if you're not making any of THOSE mistakes, then you definitely don't want to screw up on your warm-ups. The consistent use of a comprehensive warm-up including dynamic stretching, activation and mobility exercises prior to and after your strength training sessions will dramatically affect your long-term gains and overall health of your joints as well as very likely helping you put up higher numbers on the bar!
Video Demonstration of proper warm-up for lower body training
Soft Tissue Work
Foam Roller: Quads
Foam Roller: IT Bands
Foam Roller: T-Spine
Foam Roller: Lats (Upper body... but important during Squats)
Tennis Ball: Piriformis
Tennis Ball: Glute Medius
Tennis Ball: Rectus Femoris
Tennis Ball: Tensor Fascia Lata
Pre-Activation Dynamic Stretching
RF & TFL
Quads
Iliopsoas
Rectus Femoris & Tensor Fascia Lata with Reach
Activation Exercises
Glute Bridge Isometric
Glute Bridge Repetitions
Glute Bridge with Twist & Reach
Mobility Exercises
Striders
Striders into Glute Stretch
Squat to Stand
Cossack Squats
Horizontal Adductor
Fire Hydrant into Extension
When I filmed this video, I filmed it as one continuous shot so you could see exactly how long it takes to do it. Unfortunately my Youtube account only allows uploads of 10 minutes, and the video was 11:52 minutes. A few hours later and a fair bit of frustration, I got all the editing done.
Do this to properly warm-up before a lower body workout.
And what would be more cool than anything else would be if you would take a few minutes to sign yourself up for a free Youtube account (which allows you to rate videos), and then if you would rate my video!
5 Stars will bring lots more goodies where this one came from!
Thanks tons!
:)
Shane
