The Exact (165 Calorie / 18 Minute) Warm-Up I Use Before Strength Workouts

September 24, 2024
superfitdad
Training

During the Training For Warriors course with Martin Rooney, he explained that your workout warm-up has 3 main purposes:

Injury Prevention
Improve Blood Flow
Activate the Central Nervous System

A straight-shooter and multi-time UFC corner-man, I took his words to heart.

Dan John, another “Fitlosopher” (a term that, while accurate, which does a disservice to an absolute titan of the game. Actually, perhaps it doesn’t upon reflection), who’s simple but almost bizarrely effective workouts have served as the central tenants in a lot of my training over the years, added the wisdom that as you go through the fitness gears, the “warm-up becomes the workout.”

The idea here being that by the end of a decent warm-up, you’re blurring the lines of what is actually a warm-up activity and what is part of a hard workout.

Here’s the exact same workout that I do before every single strength session in the gym that isn’t a part of someone else’s class.

The ‘Warm-Up Is The Workout Warm-Up’ For Strength Training

1. 5 Minutes On Assault Bike

The Assault bike (not an affiliate link btw but the easiest way to show a picture of the damned thing) is a sinister piece of gym equipment (an exercise bike with handles that you row, I guess).

You can do all manner of damage to yourself in a very short period of time on one of these. I thoroughly recommend it.

But for warm-up purposes, 5 minutes easy cycling at around 60 rpm whilst you faff around with selecting tunes or a podcast is plenty. If you want to dial things up a notch, try it using nasal breathing-only. Interesting.

2. 5 Mins Dynamic Stretching

Off the bike it’s onto the gym floor for some dynamic stretching.

I was told once that muscles are like treacle: when they’re cold, they are brittle & can snap, but once warm, they become stretchy & gooey, which is what we like.

I prefer dynamic stretching for this reason and because it adds a frisson of yogic-cadrio-ey type play. So I go for:

10 deadlifts (soft knees, shins perpendicular to the floor, lats engaged, sliding back the hips etc)

10 squats (increasing depth as a I go)

10 upward dogs to downward dogs

10 hip-openers each side (aka The King Of Stretches)

3. Light Shoulder Cluster

With my muscles all nice and warm & squidgy, I get onto the weights, grabbing a hefty pair of 1kg dumbbells.

Yep, you heard right, 1kg.

With these heavy bangers, I do:

10 lateral raises
10 Arnold presses
10 of these weird palms-facing forward raises I saw Mike O’Hearn do
10 front raises

I then repeat this with 2kg dumbbells and, if I’ve had my pre-workout, 3kg dumbbells.

My shoulders are my weakest area, surgery-addled and puny, so I’m trying to build them into (mini) boulders whilst bullet-proofing them against further attack.

4. Empty Barbell Complex

I now move into the weight-lifting rigs and grab space in a rack. Positioning an empty Olympic barbell (20kg) at nut-height or just below, I go for:

15 reps – hang power-clean, shoulder press, bicep curl

10 reps – hang power-clean, shoulder press, bicep curl

5 reps – hang power-clean, shoulder press, bicep curl

Occasionally I might begin this complex with some deadlifts, but not often.

This combination gets my heart-rate through the roof (135-140 bpm), fires up the central-nervous-system to let it know some more heavy stuff is coming, and is heavy enough to act as decent accessory work for the 24” pythons (that’s a Hulk Hogan reference for you horribly young whipper-snappers).

And, yep, you did read that right: I’m doing bicep curls in a squat rack but at this point in my life I’m giving off enough zero-fuck, Dad-animal vibes that nobody but the biggest ‘roided up muscle-mary is gonna come over and say anything (I hope).