The Ultimate Pre-Workout Warm-Up for Muscle Growth & Body Recomp | Ep. 119

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Most people waste time foam rolling, stretching, or jogging before lifting. In this episode, we break down what the science (and real-world experience) says about warm-ups that actually improve training performance.

You’ll learn why most warm-ups don’t help (or even hurt progress), how to structure yours for strength and hypertrophy, and the exact warm-up protocol we use with clients for better results in less time.

Timestamps:
00:10 – Most people are warming up wrong
01:05 – Free month of coaching (podcast-only offer)
01:50 – Why foam rolling is (mostly) useless
04:00 – When stretching becomes counterproductive
05:00 – Why cardio before lifting backfires
06:15 – What to do instead: simple warm-up structure
08:20 – Dynamic drills for upper and lower body
12:20 – The warm-up that matters most: ramp-up sets
16:50 – Examples for warm up sets
20:30 – Warming up for isolation/accessory work
24:30 – When to break the rules + final takeaways

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Beyond Fitness Podcast. I'm your host, Cade Howell, and I just want to say thanks for tuning in. I appreciate your time and I hope you enjoy the show. Most people in the gym warm up something like this. They might foam roll for 10 minutes. Maybe they go do some bosu ball squats and try to not break an ankle, or they uh jump in and start doing just a bunch of burpees right off the bat. Uh maybe they stretch every little muscle in their body until it feels like it's gonna rip off the bone. And then they maybe go for a quick, you know, 30-minute jog and then finally get to their workout. But they're already gassed and they don't want to do their workout anymore. Is that you? I hope that's not you. Because if it is, you're in luck, actually, because this episode is all about how to perfect your warm-up. And the truth is, a good warmup should take maybe five minutes, you know, pre-training, and it should leave you feeling primed and excited to train, not like you just like destroyed yourself and you need to go take a fat nap. So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through why what most people do for warmups is a waste of time and in some cases can actually be harmful, and then break down the exact structure that I use myself and how we generally program warmups for clients. It's dependent on the person. So that's what we're gonna be going through. And as a quick reminder, we just started an exclusive offer for you, podcast listener you, to get a free month of coaching. So if you're interested, you can check out the link in the show notes, snag a free month of our full body recomp coaching service. And with that said, let's jump into the episode. So let's start with why most warmups suck, to put it bluntly, or I guess in a nicer way, why most warmups just aren't worth the time or could be optimized. So, first of all, foam rolling. Very common thing. I'm not saying foam rolling is a complete waste of time or it's gonna destroy your gains, but I think a lot of people think it does stuff that it doesn't actually do. Um, it doesn't, you know, break up the knots or break up the fascia like a lot of people think. Research shows that maybe gives you some minor flexibility benefits for like five to ten minutes afterwards, and then maybe some minor soreness relief, which probably isn't ideal if you're sore going into a training session where you're training that muscle that is sore. So that's a whole other podcast episode. Um, but if you're foam rolling to reduce soreness when you're gonna train a muscle that's sore, I'd probably just wait and re-kind of evaluate what your training split is looking like, the volume, intensity, those kinds of things. So that's the big thing with foam rolling. It's not a waste of time. If you like it, if it makes you feel good, if you just like the feeling of just rolling the crap out of your muscles. And personally, I hate it. It's uncomfortable. And uh some of those awkward positions you have to get in, especially if you've ever tried to um foam roll your adductors, like the inside of your thigh, looks a little bit awkward if you're doing that in the in the corner of the gym. So I'm personally not a fan, but again, totally fine if you enjoy it, if it makes you feel good, but it's not essential. It's not worth the you know, 10 minutes or so that it might take to foam roll every muscle group that you're gonna be training for that session, unless maybe you have some specific issues that you're trying to address, or again, you just enjoy it. Um and then static trap stretching, which is basically just the usual stretching you think of, like where you bend down, touch your toes, that kind of thing. Um I remember like in P class, like we would we would always do the static stretching uh before those super intense, you know, PE games of dodgeball. But the thing with with stretching, it it's not that it's a bad thing, it's just kind of a a timing thing. Because before training, what you're doing by doing this static stretching is you're you're lengthening, you're forcing the muscle to lengthen and kind of relax, which is not ideal when you're gonna go a few minutes later and you know load it with a lot of weight and create a lot of tension. Um, it can reduce your strength and power output and can increase injury risk if you're really overdoing it. So it's better save for after training or just separate mobility work. Again, there's a time and place for this static stretching, but probably not right before you go into your workout. And next is cardio before lifting. And I'm actually gonna recommend some form of cardio, you'll have to wait for that. But by cardio before lifting in this context, I mean like longer or more intense cardio. If you're doing a 30-minute quote unquote cardio, you know, warm-up session before your actual workout, you're just gonna be doing more harm than good. If your goal is hypertrophy, building muscle, getting stronger. Um, if you go in and you just get gassed from a 30-minute warm-up cardio session, you're not gonna perform as well. You're gonna burn through the precious glycogen stores that you want, which is good what's gonna help fuel your training performance. And then just mentally, if you're anything like me after a cardio session, you might feel like, you know, I like I feel clear-headed and stuff, but I'm not like, oh yeah, I want to go, you know, lift some heavy weights now. So that's something that if you're gonna do formal cardio, which I think is great, just again, save that for a separate time. Do that at a different part of the day or on a different day. Um, but this is a good transition into how I would actually recommend and how I personally go about my warmups and how I typically program clients' warmups dependent on the person and if they have any specific um things that we need to address in their warmup, which is relatively rare. But I think the first step, which is kind of optional depending on the person time of year, is warm-up in the name kind of explains itself. You want to warm your body up, you want to raise your body temperature. So if it's not like hot outside, if you're going in there and it's the middle of winter and it's freezing, you probably want to, you know, go on the treadmill, say three to ten minutes or so of like some brisk walking just to get some blood flowing. Again, get your body warmed up. It doesn't have to be walking, it could be the bike or elliptical. I actually I'm a big fan of the elliptical because it involves a lot of muscle groups. Um, and it, you know, for an upper body session, kind of warms up like your joints and stuff and your upper body, uh, and then it's low impact for like actual formal cardio. I'm a big fan too, because it is uh you can expend a lot of energy, you can burn a lot of calories through that. But for this warm-up cardio, three to ten minutes of some fairly low intensity just to get like, you know, you're a little bit out of breath, maybe breaking a light sweat, but you're not about to go into your actual lifting session feeling ready to go home and uh just sit on the couch. So that's step number one. Really simple, quick little light cardio warm-up, sub 10 minutes. Step two is do some dynamic prep, some dynamic stretching. So instead of the static stretching, which is holding a specific stretch for an extended period of time, dynamic is basically stretching through movement. So for me, if it's a lower body session, I basically just split it up between a lower body kind of dynamic prep and an upper body dynamic prep. I don't always do this. I will if I feel like I need it. Um, or if there's like, you know, an example here, jumping into a lower body would be like sometimes my knees get a little creaky or my hips just feel tight. I like to just sit down in a deep squat, but then shift side to side so you're getting some dynamic movement in there, and I don't sit in that deep squat for a super long time. I just like to sit in it, sway back and forth a little bit, kind of open up my hips, and that helps if, especially if I'm going into a squat pattern where where I want to get a lot of range of motion, like a quad-focused squat. Um, leg swings, also a great one. This one you can do them like forward and backward. You're gonna stretch out like your hamstring when you're kicking up and um glutes and stuff like that. And then when you're kicking back, you're gonna be stretching like hip flexors, some quad. Um, so that's a good one. And then side to side, you can do the same thing. So like swinging your legs across your body back and forth, I would say, you know, 10 to 15 in each direction. And then maybe you can do like a few walking lunges or body weight squats. Um, but when it comes to warming up the specific muscles we're gonna train, that's for this next step, which we'll dig into in a second. As for upper body, um, I like to think back to PE class, again, another another PE reference, um, where I don't know if this is like a universal PE thing, but I know in my PE class we did the uh little pizza where you'd kind of like swing your arms in a small circle out of the side, and then it would be medium pizza, and then you're you'd swing them a little bit in into a bigger circle, and then large pizza, and then extra large pizza, and everyone would be like screaming extra large pizza at the end. That I I was that kid. Um so doing some of those, I actually don't really do those exactly. I'll just like kind of swing my arms around, get my shoulders kind of loosened up, and then like across the body, swinging back and forth, maybe do some push-ups, especially if it's like a push day, um, or where you could do like band pull-aparts, things like that, or shoulder internal and external rotations. If you need more specific like shoulder um warm-up drills. So when it comes down to it, just keep it quick. If you don't have a specific need for warming up a certain muscle or joint, your time is gonna be better spent on the actual lifts that you'll be performing and warming up for those in a very specific way, which is step number three here, warm-up sets. So this is the most important thing. You could skip everything above this, and you're probably gonna be fine. This is the thing that you do not skip for, and you kind of want to split it up in in different ways because a warm-up set for a you know really heavy squat or a warm-up set sequence for really heavy squat is gonna be different than a warm-up set or two for some bicep curls. So I split it into you know heavier compound movements. I personally do three, sometimes four warm-up sets where you're basically just kind of your the goal is to acclimate to the heavier weight and get the muscles that you're going to be training in the specific movement pattern that you're about to do, just firing and used to that range of motion and warmed up specifically for that movement pattern. So I start the first warm-up set. Say, you know, you're doing a leg press, for example. Say it's 300 pounds. Um, let's do 200 pounds because this is gonna make it easier math for me on the spot. So 200 pounds on the leg press. For that first set, you don't want to go straight to 200 pounds. Like that's a good way to get injured, and um, you're probably not gonna perform as well either. So you want to start with about 50% of your usual working weight. And the thing is, if it's a new movement or you're just newer to lifting, this is where warm-up sets are even more important because of a few reasons they they help you get kind of like practice sets in. This is for anyone. Like treat your warm-up sets as sets to really practice having just perfect technique. Because if you do that several times before a real working set, you're more likely to perform it with great technique than just going straight into it. Um, but if you're newer to lifting, it's really helpful to have these warm-up sets in place because it helps you learn how much weight you should be using instead of just trying to pick up a weight and hope that it has you, you know, at the rep range that you're aiming for. So if you're newer to this, you know, be conservative. Like start with roughly half of what you think you could do. Pick a relatively light weight. Um, but if you're, you know, if you've lifted before, if you've done this specific movement before, start with 50% or so of your usual working weight, which you should be tracking so you can be progressing consistently. So you can look back at your logbook or on the app or whatever if you're using an app to track and see, okay, last week I did 200 pounds on this leg press. So for this first warm-up set, I am going to do 50% of that, 100 pounds. Um, and I I like to aim for eight to 12 reps. I don't really set like a specific RAR target because it's super hard to gauge RAR when you're not pushing relatively close to failure at all, which you don't want to be in these warm-up sets. But at the very least, you know, five plus RAR. You should not not be getting close to failure. So 50% of your working weight for eight to 12 reps, and then you don't really need to rest a ton between these sets, maybe a little bit for these compounds, but then go to set number two, go up to about 75%. Um, so in that case, that would be what 150 pounds? Is that right? Yeah, 150 pounds. Um, and four to six reps there. So we're kind of just cutting the we're we're going up by 25% with the load, and then cutting the reps in half, essentially. So four to six reps at 150 pounds, and then your final uh warm-up set, if needed, I generally recommend doing at least three. But sometimes if this compound movement is, say, like your second squat pattern, say you did a squat before this, and now you're on leg press, you could probably get away with two. If it's your first one, maybe you need four. Um, so it kind of depends. But generally, I think three is a good rule of thumb. So for this one, you want to do about 90% of your working weight for I like to do one to two reps. So at that point, that's like 180 pounds, one to two reps, and now you're you're acclimated to go into that 200 pound, you know, working weight, and you should feel pretty, it's it's not gonna feel nearly as heavy as if you as as it would if you just jumped into straight to 200 pounds. So that's how I go about the heavier compound movements, and you just go into your working sets. After the warm-up sets, you do want to rest a little bit so you're feeling fresh going into the working set or sets. Then for your lighter compounds or kind of accessory and isolation movements, usually, you know, one or two sets at like 50 to 70 percent, 50 to 75 percent of your working weight for uh you know, four to six reps or so is good. These are less important because of a few reasons. One, they're just not you're you're not gonna be using as much weight, and so there's less risk for injury. You just don't have to warm up as as much as you would when you're using you know a much heavier um when you're performing much heavier movement. So you can get away with one or two. And then also you've probably done compounds earlier in your session. I think as a general rule of thumb, that's good to do the heavier compounds first when you're more fresh, and then go to the accessory and isolation work. Um and you're already going to be warmed up to some extent, say for say you did, you know, some uh bent over rows, and that was kind of your compound movement for the beginning of the session. So you did three warm-up sets for that. Then if you go into like pull downs afterwards, you probably don't need the full three warm-up sets again. Maybe, but two warm-up sets is probably going to be enough because your back is already warmed up, it's not the exact same movement pattern. Um, so that's where I probably would do the two at least warm-up sets, maybe three if I really feel like I need it that day. Um, but if it's like a just an isolation movement like curls after doing the rows and then pull downs, your biceps are pretty warmed up from doing the rows and pull downs. You probably only need one warm-up set. Um the one caveat is I personally like to do, I like to you know air towards a bit more if it is a lengthened biased movement. So if it's like a um, for example, like uh an incline dumbbell curl where like you're gonna get a really good stretch on your biceps, or even like a preacher curl, that's probably where I'd I'd just play it safe and do two warm-up sets and kind of accumulate up to that working weight um a little bit slower compared to just one and then jumping straight to it. So that is essentially all you need to do for a warm-up. I know it sounds like a lot throwing out all those numbers and stuff, but really it's like maybe five minutes at the beginning of the workout, and then for each exercise, for the first few, the compounds, it'll take a few minutes on each of those to do the warmup sets. Um, and then for the lighter movements afterwards, it's gonna take, I don't know, maybe 30 seconds to a minute. So that is how I recommend doing it. Now, the reason why this works is because you are warming up the exact muscles and joints that you're gonna be training in the exact movement pattern. If you're just going in there and doing the foam rolling and you do, you know, a bunch of burpees and you stretch and all this stuff, like, yeah, you're warming up, you're getting your core body temperature up, but you're not training the exact movement pattern that you're about to do. So again, treat these warm-up sets as practice sets so you can really just perfect your form and then again gauge how much weight you should be using if you're kind of newer to lifting in general or newer to this movement. And then another big reason this works is it prepares your nervous system for heavier lifts without as much, without building up the fatigue of an actual working set. So that's important because mentally, which here's a little bonus hack. I sometimes I know I just said, you know, generally you do your uh compounds before isolations, but there are some situations where I prefer to do an isolation movement or two before my compound movements. Um and one of the reasons I do this is to kind of mentally warm up. Because if you go just walk into the gym and say it's a heavy set of squats, like mentally it is hard, like your brain is not not warmed up to take on that just intensity and take on the hell that you're about to go through. So mentally doing like you know, even some calf raises beforehand, which another little side benefit of doing calf raises before squats is it will help kind of stretch your calf and improve your ankle mobility. So you're gonna be able to squat deeper. Um and calves, let's face it, are a weak point for most of us. So it doesn't hurt to put those earlier in the session because what you train first, you're gonna have the most energy for, and probably be able to progress better over time. Um, similar thing with like leg curls before um like a lower body session before squats and stuff can kind of help warm up your knees, just get some blood flowing in your lower body, and then hamstrings in general tend to be a little bit weaker than uh quads for a lot of people, again, di depending on the person. And then lastly, why this works is because it keeps your warmups short and consistent and effective, and your time is much better spent actually training. You know, if your goal is muscle growth or strength, your the time that you're spending training is the valuable time that's actually leading to results. The warmups are very important, but they don't need to be these super long, extravagant things. So, main takeaway is keep your warm-up, the initial warm-up under five minutes, maybe ten if you're doing like a little bit of foam rolling, just because you you have a thing for foam rolling or whatever it is, or the you want to do a little bit more dynamic work, or you have a specific thing you want to really work on before going into training. Um and again, the the initial cardio session, very light cardio, is just to raise your body temperature and then do the one or two dynamic drills if you feel like it would benefit you. You know, try it out one session and then not the next, see if you're actually really benefiting from it. I generally recommend it, and then ramp up with one to three warm-up sets before hitting your working weight. So that is what I got for you today. Hopefully you enjoy that on your next uh next workout. Give it a little warm-up test and uh put it, yeah, put it put it to the test. See if you enjoy it. And again, as a reminder, you can get a full month of our programming and not just the training side of things, but nutrition, blood work, accountability, everything all for free. We only offer this specific offer to podcast listeners. We give you a month for free to test it out because to be honest, podcast listeners are my favorite people. They make the best clients. They, whenever I have a call with them, they're just fun to talk to because they're kind of nerds like me. So want to throw that out there. That's something we just started doing. So if you're interested, you can check out the show notes below and enjoy your new warmups, and we'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you for tuning in. I hope that episode was helpful. If it was, my only ask is to drop a quick rating or review. It would mean the world. And as a thank you, I'll gift you a free month of our full body reconp coaching service with custom training, nutrition, blood work analysis, and more. Just drop a review, then check out the show notes to claim that free month, or grab my body recomp guide for free, and I'll catch you in the next episode.