5 "New" Reasons to Warm Up
Written by Nate Palin
The inclusion of a warm-up block prior to a training session is typically touted as a means to prevent injuries and enhance subsequent performance. The evidence of warm-ups preventing injuries is fairly unconvincing and some evidence even suggests certain approaches to warming up can actually hinder performance.
Regardless, I find both deliberate and casual preparatory work have other potential benefits that make the warm-up a staple in my programming for warfighters.
Why I Still Think You Should Warm Up
First things first… It seems that the “warm-up” is where you “warm up” but you can also call it a “warmup” if preferred, even if Google’s grammar check doesn’t love it. Maybe coaches started calling it “movement prep” because they were fed up with deciphering how to use the hyphen? Personally, I hate the damn hyphen in exercise names like “Push-Up” and “Pull-Up.” But also, how’s it considered prep for movement when it IS movement? Should it be called “prep movement”? I have an idea! Call me crazy… Maybe we just call it “training”?!
Holy tangent - Where was I? Oh yes, The warm-up is a valuable component of training.
Here are some reasons why:
Helps maintain consistency of activity
Presents an opportunity to touch movement diversity
Serves as a gateway drug to an actual training session
Offers a safe space to experiment
Triggers training focus
Consistency of Activity
The Any Given Day approach to training prioritizes the need to stay ready for anything at any time over periodized optimization for specific, predictable events. This means accepting lower peaks in performance in exchange for maintaining higher valleys. Injury risk mitigation is essential for staying healthy enough to perform.
Since attempting to execute “too much too soon” is still a leader in injury mechanisms, it is essential to reduce the periods of inactivity that warfighters tend to attempt to offset by diving right back into extreme activity. Warm-ups require little time, limited space, almost zero training knowledge and absolutely zero equipment, making them easy to perform consistently, including sometimes as a standalone session.
To mitigate the military population’s injury prone polarization between completely ON and completely OFF the physical fitness wagon, encourage the implementation of warm-up type activity into the everyday life of warfighters. For me, it’s as simple as a morning flow routine while my coffee brews.
Movement Diversity
While inconsistency plagues military physicality, a lack of movement competency is another issue that hinders warfighters. The military has a history of very linear and limited exercises like runs, push-ups, sit-ups, and, if you’re lucky, pull-ups. As I’ve often said, “The Army can beat the athleticism out of anyone.”
To help overcome movement incompetency, it’s important that warfighters touch a diverse set of movements with a high frequency. Motion is lotion, after all. And movement is medicine. Sometimes cheesy sayings exist for a legitimate reason.
Yes, the warm-up can and should help prepare you for the impending session - but it also presents an opportunity to touch the movements not included within that day of training. It also presents an opportunity to touch some movements that might never make the starting lineup because they’re outside of your comfort zone or don’t fit well into buckets.
The warm-up provides a place for some discomfort and creativity, where your ego might be willing to crawl, march, and skip.
Be sure to hit the big rocks of rotation, hinging, squatting, stepping/lunging, pushing, and pulling, but also consider targeting the supporting cast with more local movements like ankle flexion, toe dexterity, internal hip rotation, thoracic spine extension, neck mobility etc. These micromovements rarely make it into my training rotation but I touch them daily during my morning coffee flow, and it takes me all of five minutes to complete.
Movement diversity by way of warming up helps build back some athleticism.
Gateway to a Training Session
In my opinion, the only one of the eight troop leading procedures that is absolutely essential is, “Step 4 - Initiate Movement.”
Tom Petty might have felt that “the waiting is the hardest part” but, when it comes to physical activity, it’s often the “starting” that’s the hardest part. Very few feel naturally inclined to disrupt personal comfort in exchange for future progress when sweat, shortness of breath, soreness, and a high heart rate are the immediate price to be paid. Since zero to 100 sounds daunting, zero to ten might be an approachable compromise - Like picking up a light jog to traverse the crosswalk instead of breaking into a full sprint when the red hand appears.
Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to stay in motion or even shift to a higher gear. What began as “just a little movement” can unsuspectingly transform into a full blown workout if you’re not careful. Several sunshine strolls have quietly turned into three or four miles of walk/jog interval sessions just because they got me started.
Changing into athletic attire with the intention of performing a highly approachable warm-up opens the door to the possibility of performing at higher volumes and intensities because it changes your mindset and your environment. The warm-up is a gateway drug. Next thing you know, you’re high on post-training endorphins - not quite as euphoric as cocaine but the side effects are slightly more beneficial…
Safe Space to Experiment
Ever seen an operator skip? The level of discomfort is palpable.
Take that same skip and make it lateral and their egos become so protective that you might as well be asking them to share the most insecure corners of their souls in a televised speech to the entire free world. Maybe a slight exaggeration but I spent my entire three years at a SOF unit watching a team’s leader refuse to jump rope a single repetition.
That example aside, we were typically successful in creating warm-ups within an environment where operators accepted some silliness, some fun, and even some engagement with vulnerability. Their egos took a hit but their bodies became more versatile. They enhanced range of motion, spatial awareness, disassociation between left/right and upper/lower, timing & speed, and other qualities that directly contribute to multidirectional movement efficiency - All made possible by embracing discomfort while warming up.
For whatever reason, we are willing to accept more random exercise selection in warmups compared to training. A lot of plyometric exercises are sold as an end to the warmup instead of a start to training. Warmups are also a safe haven for rolling, crawling, marching, getting up and down, moving lighter weights, breathing with intention, and holding kettlebells with the bottom up.
Triggers Training Focus
I love the sometimes ridiculous and sometimes serious conversations that tend to find their way into the beginnings of training sessions. Sometimes it’s a whole group competing for the podium (and competing with the coach) and sometimes it’s two bros conversing after an epic weekend before a Monday morning bench sesh.
However, at some point, words need to give way to action. Effective warmups achieve this transition.
Something as simple as a jog around the building can reduce the chatter and increase the collective focus. While I’m a huge fan of socialization to open and close out training, the work that occurs between often requires a level of physical and mental energy that isn’t conducive to swapping stories and horseplay (as the old folks call it).
Mindfulness, the intentional application of energy and attention, means keeping your mind in the moment. When the warm-up is missing or the flow is choppy, you’ll witness more mistakes - some more harmless than others; bars loaded unequally, cleans attempted with a snatch grip, operators impending on each other’s lifting space (and sometimes getting hit by moving weights), rolled ankles, untied shoes, uncleaned messes, and full blown fights. . . these are just a few examples of many mistakes I’ve seen when focus is lacking.
Endex
I’m not selling the warm-up as face value injury prevention or performance enhancement. However, it is my opinion that the injury risk is mitigated and performance is elevated over the course of a warfighter’s career in large part thanks less to elevating heart rates and mobilizing joints, and thanks more to the warm-up facilitating:
Consistency of activity
Movement diversity
Actual training sessions
A safe space to experiment
Training focus
For these reasons, I plan to keep warming up as a precursor to training or as a stand alone activity. I will also continue to include warm-ups in the routines of the warfighters I coach.
AGD Communications
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