So you want to get fit and look good to spice up your love life. You decide to go workout at the gym. But how do you warm up for your workout? Do you do ten minutes on the bike to get the blood pumping? Maybe you follow this by some stretching to limber up the joints? One thing I’ve found as a personal trainer is how many people get it wrong to warm up for the workout that they are about to do. Let me dispel a few myths when it comes to warming up.
Scott Sherwood
The warm up you do will be specific to the type of workout you do. Let’s start with a cardiovascular (CV) workout. Now this is an aerobic workout, that is, the body is going to use oxygen to burn the energy molecule for fuel. For the body to start doing this, it needs a bit of preparation time to get the whole cycle up and running in your mitochondria – the ‘battery’ organelles in your cells.
This takes about five to ten minutes before it kicks in. The best warm up you can do for a CV workout is a walk or slow jog on a bike or treadmill for 10 minutes. After you’ve done this, then you can up the speed and start going for it!
Now let’s look at a weights workout. Now this is an anaerobic workout. The body doesn’t use oxygen to fuel the muscle. O2 and the ATP don’t get a look-in. So what’s happening? The muscle is using its glycogen stores for fuel. This only lasts about 30-40 seconds (not by coincidence about the time a set should last). The by-product of this reaction is…lactic acid. That’s the soreness you feel at the end of the set.
Hot fit lad working out
It’s all incredibly inefficient compared to the aerobic reaction but, hey, that’s your lot. Also, that’s why you should rest between sets of 1 to 1.5 minutes as this allows the blood to replenish the glycogen supplies in the muscle.
So by doing the warm up on the bike/treadmill/whatever before your weights workout, you have depleted not only the stores in your muscle, but most of those in the blood as well. So you have completely reduced the maximum you can get from your muscle for the weights workout as this glycogen won’t be replaced until eat after the workout.
Stretching as a warm up is also a no-no. NEVER stretch before or during a weights workout. Recent studies have shown that pre-exercise stretching or even stretching between sets decreases muscle strength and might increase the risk of injury. An explanation as to why this happens isn’t known but it is thought that stretching beforehand, or mid-exercise may increase the ‘give’ in the joints and so reduce the effect of the muscle contraction on the weight.
So what is the best way of warming up for a weights workout? Weights! Say that you bench press 50 kgs. Do one set of 25 kgs (i.e. 50%) for 15 repetitions. Rest one minute. Follow this by a second set of 37.5 kgs (i.e. 75%). Rest one minute then go on and do your usual three sets for ten to twelve reps at your normal exercise weight of 50 kgs.
Why? The warm up for a weights workout is to not only prepare the muscle, but also the tendons and ligaments as well. By starting with lighter weights, the tendons and ligaments react to the strain accordingly. Also, your joints start to release synovial fluid to act as a lubricant between the bones.
I hope this helps clarify the situation by what is meant by a warm up. You should also be able to gather from the above that if you are going to do any CV work on your weights day, it’s better done AFTER your weights workout. So too for stretching.
Now, before you hit on that cute guy you fancy, hit the gym! Soon you’ll have the body to date with confidence.
