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By Charles Staley, B.Sc,
MSS
Director, Staley Training Systems
The basic idea
of a good warm-up is to walk that fine line between preparing yourself
adequately for the intense work to come, without fatiguing yourself
in the process. From my
observations, however, few people seem to manage this, either performing
far too little work, or doing so much that their warm-up becomes
a workout in itself. I conceptualize the perfect warm-up as a 5-
stage event, as follows:
Engage Brain Before
Putting Body in Gear: The Mental Warm-up
The experienced athlete has been thinking
about the impending workout all week. He’s rehearsed the workout
dozens of times in his mind, and is already aware of the possible
problems he might encounter (such as dealing with rush hour in the
gym or a nagging hamstring pull that might kick up during the workout).
A novice trainee, on the other hand,
can be identified by the fact that he doesn’t even know what
he will do until he gets to the gym (and maybe not even then!).
Since novices typically get novice-level results, I urge you to
explore visualization and autogenic training, both of which are
established methods of maximizing physical performance both in training
and in competition.
Some people learn these techniques
on their own, others need instruction. Either way, USE them!
- If you’ll be training early
in the morning, and/or if it’s cold out, beef up the warm-up
process commensurately.
- Training in dry climates requires
a more thorough warm-up than training in humid surrounds.
- Older trainees generally profit
from more extensive warm-ups.
- If you are otherwise healthy but
have “creaky” joints, err on the side of being too extensive
with your warm-up. After all, the goal of being able to train
takes precedence over the fact that you might fatigue yourself
slightly with an extensive warm-up.
- The closer you venture toward 1RM
in your workout, the more extensive your warm-up should be. In
other words, do a more thorough warm-up for 5×5 than you
would for 3×12.
- You can accelerate your warm-up
through passive means such as a hot bath or shower. Although active
means are superior to passive, often, a combination of the two
leads to great results.
- On exercises where your own bodyweight
is the minimal load possible (chins, dips, etc.), first warm up
with similar exercises that allow lesser loads (e.g., lat pulldowns
and decline bench presses), and then proceed to the target exercise,
using multiple sets of 1 rep. As soon as the next set of 1 does
not feel any easier than the set before it, you’re ready
to proceed to your work sets.
- If you are executing exercises
for antagonistic muscle groups “back to back” (such
as training seated rows with triceps extensions), do your warm-up
sets for these exercises in the same pattern that you’ll
use for the work sets.
- If you’ve done it right, your
middle work set(s) will feel the easiest. For example, when performing
5×8, the 3rd set should feel the best, and sets 4 and 5
should feel progressively more difficult. If your last sets feel
the best, it indicates that your warm-up was not thorough enough.
If your first work sets are easiest, you may have warmed-up too
much.
On to the Heavy Metal…
If you’ve followed my suggestions,
you should now feel warm, strong, loose, and enthusiastic about
training hard. It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? Fifteen
minutes ago you could barely tolerate the thought of a hard workout;
now you’re looking forward to it!
About The Author
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His colleagues call him an iconoclast,
a visionary, a rule-breaker. His clients call him “The
Secret Weapon” for his ability to see what other coaches
miss. Charles calls himself a “geek” who struggled
in Phys Ed throughout school. Whatever you call him, Charles’
methods are ahead of their time and quickly produce serious
results. His counter-intuitive approach and self-effacing
demeanor have lead to appearances on NBC’s The TODAY
Show and The CBS Early Show.
Currently, Charles competes
in Olympic-style weightlifting on the master’s circuit,
with a 3-year goal of qualifying for the 2009 Master’s
World Championships.
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Learn More
About
EDT Training!
Charles Staley’s
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Video Guide To Escalating Density Training" is available
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