The Warm Up

“Hey! What’s up? So I wanted to go over with you something extremely important. I’ve already probably mentioned it to you if you came in for the assessment but I want to do a video about it because it is so important for your results, for your safety and for your health. And that is what we’re here for. So, what is it? Well we’re talking about the warm up, right? The warm up is an injury prevention. So that’s the no. 1 thing that all of these things I am listing here are going to be about, right? So, it’s an I feel safe preparation type thing, that’s what we’re doing. So I’m just gonna go down a list of the benefits of the warm up.

(1) Psychological and Mental Preparation

When you’re warming up you’re getting yourself ready, you’re getting your body and your mind ready for the training. Remember we say like 80% of everything or you hear that said 80% of everything is mental right? Well, that’s true! Training is mental. The preparation for training is even bigger and better than you can even imagine. You will get 10x the result, you’ll feel much better when you do the warm up and the proper warm up. And what is a proper warm up? Well, I’ll get into that.

It (2) Increases your Core Temperature and your Heart Rate so that means you’re getting more oxygen to the body, more blood flow to the muscles, the muscles will work better, you’ll get better results, and you’ll be safer in the training.

It also (3) Increases Proprioception. Proprioception is an awareness in space. It allows us to touch our finger to our nose, so when we’re out there doing movements, we’re gonna do better movements, more masterful movements and then you’re gonna activate the muscles more and better to get more results.

(4) Activates the Nervous System

The nervous system works by you sending info from your brain. You’re firing electrical impulses and information to your extremities to get them to move. The more information you send, the more muscle fibers you activate through the motor units. The motor units recruit your muscle fibers and then you get more out of the training. Again, all of these leads back to getting more results, being safer.

It (5) Activates Synovial Fluid to lubricate the joints like oiling up your joints. So if you just jump right into workouts all the time, that’s a lot more force going on to the joints without the lubrication, so think about it as driving a rusty car all the time without oil. You’re going to break down a lot faster, a lot sooner so and this is another reason why water intake is extremely important right? That’s another separate video aside from this but it’s in combination everything works together. So we want to activate synovial fluid to get the joints more lubricated and ready to move which will help up us. (I’m gonna jump to no. (7) Increase in our Strength, Mobility, Flexibility and Endurance.

And jumping back to no. (6) It’s going to Encode the Proper Form and Technique when you move back into the training area. So say, you do your warm up and then you’re going to the training area, your muscles are activated you’re mentally, psychologically prepped , your blood flow is going, your heart rate is up. Now, you’re gonna burn more calories, you’re gonna burn more carbs which is our prefered source, the body’s prefered source of energy, you burn the carbs in the warm up and then you’ll burn more fat in training. And that’s what we’re here for. Burning fat, gaining lean muscle and feeling better right? It also helps detoxify the body.

So, what’s the best way to warm up? Well, the warm up ideally would be about 20 minutes long. If you’re just starting out, that’s maybe too much for you to handle. So 5-10 minutes minimum is what we want and we have a few different options. We have a you know our actual warm up video or you can go around jogging, that will get your heart rate up. It’s a good way to meditate, psychologically prepare or you can use the cardio equipment which is always the last thing I recommend for people because I want the people to move kind of in the range of motion that they will be moving when they get into the training which is kind of squat patterns, pressing, arm movements right? This is why mobility drills and warm up drills are extremely important.

Ok, so just a recap when we do the mobility, activation or warm up drills, it’s going to activate the nervous system, get more synovial fluid to your joints, it’s gonna increase your heart rate and blood flow to the working muscles, it’s gonna psychologically prepare you for the training and you’re going to increase your strength, endurance, mobility, flexibility, stability, you’ll have more proprioception and awareness of where you are in space so you won’t trip, fall over, you will feel safer in general. Therefore, we keep you safe, you have less injuries, less joint aches and pains, and more results. That’s why the warm up is so important. I hope this video help. Have a great day!”

Ian Hart is a Body-Mind Transformation expert, the creator of EarthFIT Training Systems, co-creator of BACK PAIN RELIEF4LIFE, and founder of BEAUFORTPERSONALTRAINING.COM and MYBACKPAINCOACH.COM. Ian and his team help people get into optimal shape in the safest, fastest and most effective way possible, using cutting edge science.