What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
Today we're going to cover the warm up and what I think is the big mistake a lot of guys
are making when they approach their workouts.
We call it the Workout Warm Up Mess Up, right.
You're probably going to think that I'm going to tell you,
especially as a physical therapist, that you're doing too little to get your body warmed up
to train.
I'm actually going to tell you the opposite.
I think a lot of guys are doing way too much, especially when you consider we have limited
resources to get our work done, get out of the gym, recover, regrow, rebuild.
So, if we take an example here.
The normal, let's say we're looking for our 10 Rep Max work set, so we're going to apply
it to a compound exercise like the Dumbbell Bench Press.
If that number for you, or let's say 85-pound dumbbells that you're going to lift here,
the rule of thumb is, let's say you have your 4 warm up sets to get yourself ready for your
workout.
Right away, if you just start here, you're probably making a mistake.
I tell you guys all the time, it's not just what you're doing in your lifting.
You want to get your core body temperature up as well.
You do that by doing some sort of movement activity.
My favorite is jump rope, but you can do a stationary bike.
You can do a quick jog.
Something to get your core temperature up and it only takes about 5-7 minutes if you're
doing it at adequate intensity.
When we approach the worksets, though, a lot of times guys will hear the old adage of 'Cut
it down by about 50 percent and that will be your first warm up set.'
So, in this case, let's say somewhere around you know 45, 45 pounds.
So, here the first set is 45 pounds, right.
Second set, they creep themselves up, 55s.
Then they come up 65s.
Then they come in here 75s.
Now they're ready to go at 85 pounds.
Way too much.
Way too much preparation here using the wrong modes I feel because what you're doing is,
you're getting yourself closer and closer to these workset weights but you're not really
pushing yourself into the workset weight range,
and you're essentially tiring yourself out.
There's a much better strategy that you could be using.
I'll write it here in red.
What I like to do again is remember, there's 2 important things that you're trying to accomplish
with your warm up.
Number 1.
You're trying to get your joints, the ones that are involved in that motion, ready to
handle the heavier loads.
That's the first important point.
The second thing is, you're trying to actually grease the groove, I said.
You're trying to work the motor movement pattern that's involved in the exercise you're doing.
So, you're trying to get yourself ready to perform the Dumbbell Bench Press.
So, in this case, I recommend cutting it way back
because if you want to get the joints ready, and we want to sort of grease the groove,
we want to do that with a very light weight
because you can accomplish both with a light weight.
We go on with about 25 percent of what this weight is.
So, you're looking somewhere around 25 pounds.
So, for us, set 1 is 25 pounds.
You go high repetitions here until you feel like all the creaks and cracks are out of
your elbows and your shoulders, k.
Then, second set, same weight 25 pounds but here, we're going to go a little bit less
in terms of repetitions.
Whatever this was here, maybe go 5 to 10 repetitions less.
You could be doing maybe 20 even in the first set.
Then, we want to jump that weight up, k.
We don't want to start playing around with all these creeping weights on the way up.
We don't want to start tapping into those limited resources that we're going to need
when we actually get to the sets that are going to matter the most.
So, here, we'll jump right up to 65 pounds.
What I generally try to do is go about 20 percent less than the working weight.
And here's where it gets interesting.
Anybody that's in our NXT Program, or has followed ATHLEANX for any point in time has
realized that
we have something we call Touch Up sets.
Neurologically, Touch Up sets are great for 2 purposes.
Here, what we're going to do is now try to go on the other side of our work set.
So now we're going to go up to 20 percent more than what we normally would work with.
That in this case would be somewhere around 100 pounds.
Now, 100 pounds again at 20 percent more than our 10 rep max,
we're looking at somewhere about 4 to 5 reps, 3, 4, or 5 rep max.
So, we're not going to go and push those all the way to failure,
because we want to have again our resources at our disposal when we need to do it here
for our work sets.
But what we'll do is, we'll take them for about 2 or 3 reps.
You want your body to neurologically feel the heavier weight so now when we drop back
down into this range,
now we're ready to go.
We're ready to rock n roll, and we've done it by tapping into very little of our energy
resources.
These here, these are not going to tap into our energy resources at all.
What they're doing is again, priming our bodies, priming our joints, priming the groove of
the motor movement.
Here, again, submax, but a lot closer than all these sets were.
And then here, overshooting so that we can come back and get ready to push and push hard.
Guys, this is sort of what we have to do here.
We have to apply a little bit of strategy when we train, alright.
It's not just picking up whatever dumbbells are available on the rack, or it's not just
picking up whatever dumbbells we feel like that day.
There should be a strategy behind what you do.
There should be a strategy behind everything you do if you're actually training.
I always say, if you're working out, you do anything you want to.
If you're training, you've got to have a purpose and you've got to do things strategically.
That's what we do here, guys, at ATHLEANX.
We train you like athletes.
Athletes train with a plan because they need to.
They need to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible with no wasted movement
in between.
That's what our ATHLEANX Program does from 0 to 90, Day 1 to Day 90, will give you that
plan that you need.
If you haven't already, head to ATHLEANX.COM right now and grab our 90-Day Training Program.
In the meantime, if you found this helpful, leave your thumb's up and comments below,
guys.
And I'll make sure to keep doing what it that you want to see, and keep making the videos
that you find helpful.
Thanks guys.