The Chain Effect Podcast

The Actual Way to Warm-Up

• Chain Effect

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In this episode we discuss a neuro-developmental approach to warming up, emphasizing activation and position. Should we be stretching? We go over what people get wrong about warming up and how to test-intervene-retest in a workout to help you know when to stop and when it's safe to keep pushing. Check out the link to our functional warmup, before now only accessible in the clinic. 

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Chain Effect Podcast, where a physical therapist and a dietitian married with two kids juggle the struggle of running a business, raising a family, and prioritizing our own health, all while trying to have as much fun as possible.

SPEAKER_00:

We are your hosts, Taylor Pope, doctor of physical therapy, and Caroline Pope, registered dietitian. Together, we own and operate a health facility, bringing together physical therapists, dietitians, personal trainers, and active recovery services to create what we call

SPEAKER_01:

the Chain Effect.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. A Taylor episode. We've been rocking the Caroline episodes for a hot minute. And now it's back to me.

SPEAKER_01:

All about warming up for your workout.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, first of all, warmups, that sounds boring.

SPEAKER_01:

It is boring.

SPEAKER_00:

But there's a lot. That's why I don't. Oh, well, are we already going there? It is boring. That's why you don't ever do it.

SPEAKER_01:

So I just jump in and get to my workout.

SPEAKER_00:

Just jump in. That worked for you when you were in your 20s. But now that you're in your mid-20s. I didn't just say 30s. I said mid-30s. I know. I've slowed it down a little bit. You got to do a warm-up. She still doesn't do anything I tell her to. And then begs for treatment all the time because she's hurt. Oh,

SPEAKER_01:

please. That's not all the time. But a lot of people have questions about warm-ups. I'm sure you get it all the time. And then it's a lot of, well, do I stretch before? And I've asked you this too. Or is it more like mobility? Are you moving? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

Mm-hmm. When I was growing up playing soccer in the 80s, it was still all about getting in a circle and stretching. And I forget what the exact research study was, but basically someone was testing a box jump and max power. And they had people do static stretching, and then they had people do a general active warm-up. And the people that did a lot of... you know, static quad stretching had decreased performance immediately after like decreased power output immediately after doing a static stretching warmup. Whereas the active, uh, warmup group showed no decline.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, first of all, when you're stretching cold, you actually have the best chance of increasing flexibility. So that's also kind of a misconception is, you know, should I wait to stretch after, if I want to gain flexibility, should I be stretching hot muscles? And we got to think about what's actually happening, which is if we go to the individual muscle unit or otherwise known as a sarcomere, which is the muscle cell, the muscle cell, when we contract a muscle, it ratchets together. So imagine your bicep. When you flex your bicep, it's getting shorter. Those cells are ratcheting together. And then when it's relaxed, there's an unratcheting that happens. And so if we're trying to stretch a muscle and gain flexibility, that's really kind of a longer process where we're causing micro damage to those sarcomeres to then signal to the body to lay down more muscle cells. So we're actually... when we're gaining a lot of flexibility, we're actually gaining more of those muscle cells and accommodating to that stretch. So one, if you're going to stretch, you really have to do it for, I think the research I've seen is 90 seconds to two minutes of holding a deep stretch to gain any actual

SPEAKER_01:

purpose

SPEAKER_00:

of the public. Yeah. For the purpose of gaining flexibility. And, um, and therefore, um, because you're trying to cause micro trauma or trauma to the muscle, you need to, it's best to do it cold. Now that doesn't mean like stretch your muscles until they snap because you're stretching them cold. You're still at a greater risk of injuring yourself when your muscles are cold. But if you can do it in a controlled way, then you actually will gain more flexibility by stretching them with your muscles cold. Now,

SPEAKER_01:

so should you do that right before you're about to work out? No. At the beginning of your warmup?

SPEAKER_00:

No. This is like a separate time. Yeah, that's just a separate, like when you're trying to gain flexibility and when is the best time to stretch. Now there's also- That's what

SPEAKER_01:

people do at night. You could do it at night

SPEAKER_00:

before bed. Yeah, that's a great time. Or in the

SPEAKER_01:

morning when you wake up, but you're not about to go work out.

SPEAKER_00:

You're not about to go work out. And in reality, the warmup is- really just that we need to be warming the body up because when we warm our muscles and tendons up, we improve their elasticity. So they're better able to stretch and be deformed and they're not as likely to have an injury, which is kind of the like same, it's in that same vein of like, that's why we don't, you're not going to gain as much from stretching a hot muscle because the you're not as likely to tear those muscle fibers.

SPEAKER_01:

But it is cold when you're starting.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but you're right. But when you're starting, you should be doing some more like activation type stuff. And you're getting the body hot. So

SPEAKER_01:

going back to the box jump, though, example. Yeah. Explain why that worked better with the active warmup.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, the person already had done an active warmup, so they were, they had got their muscles hot and they hadn't stretched the muscle out, which actually, you know, a muscle that is in a more lengthened position has a couple problems with it. One, when you're really focusing on stretching a muscle, you're kind of changing the body's understanding of where that muscle is in space. So, your muscles have the ability to understand the speed of stretch, the angle of stretch and the amount of stretch that's occurring and will co-contract different muscles to protect that muscle that's being stretched. And so that's why, you know, a lot of times when you're in the gym, you're much less likely to hurt yourself doing an exercise, even if you're loading like really heavy weight, as opposed to being on a field and, running around sprinting where there's a lot of things that are uncontrollable or there's a lot of things that you might have to react to and it's just in a less controlled environment. So that's why we are much less likely to get hurt in the gym.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

So you

SPEAKER_01:

talked about warming up. That's why it's called warming up. So building that internal heat, helping the tissue get hot and more elastic, less likely to get injured. Right. So what are the other goals of an ideal warmup? Let's go walk through those goals.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So primarily we should be trying to prepare the body. This is like an overarching goal, but prepare the body for the activity you're about to do. So it might look a little different if you're going to do like a gym-based lift versus a field-based workout or playing your sport. But what I tend to do is I have... two segments. So I have a ground-based warmup and then a more active like plyometric style component. If I'm going to do my gym based lift, I'll just do the ground-based warmup because I'm not going to be running and sprinting. And then if I'm going to be doing a field work, if I'm doing field work, my warmup time is just lengthened because I do the ground-based stuff. And then I do the active plyometric stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

The second thing is we want to build internal heat. So we talked about that. When tissue gets hot, it gets more elastic. You're less likely to get injured. You're also just kind of like priming the engine. And so you're getting all of the systems going. And so in general, what I'm telling people when they're warming up, you want to break a sweat. Ideally, during your warmup, you want to break a sweat.

SPEAKER_01:

So for some people, it could feel like, they're already starting to work out. Yeah. Yeah. We think of, we have this idea of warmup, like, Oh, let me be on my mat, you know, you know, move my hips around and foam rolling and whatever it is. Yeah. There's a part of it though, that you're going to talk about when you describe your, your actual warmup in a little bit, um, where you're actually moving. People might think that's actually exercise and warmup, but it could be.

SPEAKER_00:

And when you first start, you know, a really good activation warmup, it does feel like a workout and people are like, Oh, I mean, is this the warmup or is this the workout? You're like, you're like, yeah, you're just warming up still. Yeah. A third goal is we want to be doing movements that are part of our overall body limitations. And what I mean by that is we all have different demands on our posture demands on our daily life, whether we have to sit at a computer, whether we're driving kids around, um, you know, we get into these and particularly like a C shaped, you know, posture where we're flexed sitting. Shoulders aren't back. Shoulders aren't back. We're not, we're not in our ideal posture. And so we want to do a warmup that's addressing some of those compensations, addressing our own individual work. And that's a great time to incorporate that into your warmup. I tell a lot of my clients to, you know, Don't think about these PT exercises. And, you know, a lot of people will go to PT. And one of the biggest complaints is that they get like a dozen or like 15 different exercises that they have to do with a towel and towels and all these stretches that they're supposed to hold for 30 seconds, which is part of the reason like the compliance on that is really low because it's it ends up being like 45 minutes of work. And no one's going to do that. It could

SPEAKER_01:

have been a workout instead.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. It could have been a workout. So what I tell people is like, let's pick a few of these different mobility or stability exercises that we might do as part of our either injury rehab or as part of our overall, you know, postural maintenance. And let's add those in to our warmup. Let's make those a part of our warmup because then we, we're doing them every single time we work out.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and it's much better for your body's posture long-term.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and as opposed to doing it where you're essentially doing those maybe once a week, and then you do your regular workouts, and your compliance goes way up when you're doing more frequency. So adding those into your workout makes a ton of sense.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because a lot of people, from what I understand, they could get an injury, but also the underlying root of... Their PT issue or their issue going to PT could be like uneven. you know, one side is different from another or, uh, you know, they're, they're standing a different way along with their posture. So this could help all of that over time. If you added this into your warmup.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And so that, that really kind of addresses the final goal, which is attaining an optimal position for loading. And so just like you said, you know, people will have little rotations in the pelvis, um, and, Maybe you've been sitting at a desk all day. And so your shoulder joint has been positioned in the front of the shoulder and your pecs are tight. Your biceps are tight. You haven't really brought the shoulders back and down, which is an optimal position for doing anything overhead. And so we want to prioritize getting into those optimal positions before we load and Because one, we're going to be reducing the risk of us getting injured while we're doing those movements. And two, we're developing the muscle memory of ourselves being in those optimal positions. And then we're loading those positions. So we're teaching our body, hey, this is the position we want to be in. And now we're loading those muscles. And so your body is more likely to remember what's going on with that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. When a lot of us don't think about that neurological connection that it really is what muscle memory is, but describing it in a way that's like your body also has to feel and all the neurons and all the connectivity of that needs to feel. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. You nailed it. Yeah. So describe it. Well, yeah. So we have, you know, we often talk about that as recruitment, you know, if you, If you think about, and I've used this analogy before, but if you think about just making a light fist, you can feel your fingers sort of clamped down, but the stronger you make that fist, now you feel your forearm, and then you make it extra strong, you'll feel your bicep, and then if you keep going, you'll feel it into your shoulder and even into your pec. And so you're increasing the recruitment by increasing the demand, and we just want all of those neurological pathways fired up and ready to go before we start to work out. So it makes sense. Yeah. So, um, the, one of the things that people will ask is like, should I have a, like a different warmup for these different activities? And I kind of addressed that. I think if you have a really good, solid ground-based warmup, and I'm going to go over kind of what that is, and then you have, um, maybe something else, if you're going to be doing like really explosive, uh, Like running or... Yeah, like let's

SPEAKER_01:

divide it. Like what would be the different categories of how you would diff from? So, you know, thinking about strength, you know, gym, lift session. Or there's also like the cardio slash intervals where you're using weights, maybe some resistance training, but it's not like heavy lifting. And then something outside that might be a sport where you're sprinting or you're just doing straight sprints. Which ones would you... Like how would they be different?

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm always going to start with the ground-based activation style warmup. And, um, I was really first introduced to this by, uh, Jonathan Helton, uh, ultimate Frisbee player. Um, and his warmup that he had in his programming was just excellent. And it had a, you know, really sort of, um, neurological developmental approach. And so I kind of, you know, use some of the components of that and added a few of my own little things to get what I call the chain effect warmup. But basically we're going to be moving in a way and activating muscles that sort of follows how babies learn to move.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And so

SPEAKER_01:

you're starting in fetal position on the floor and then,

SPEAKER_00:

well, no, but you're starting on, you're starting on your back,

SPEAKER_01:

right?

SPEAKER_00:

You're starting on your back with your legs elevated and your, and the first thing we're doing is called the 90 90, but, but real quick with that neurodevelopmental approach, we're basically like starting on our back. Then we're doing like laying on our side and doing rolling patterns. And then we're working our way into quadruped. And then we're working our way into half kneeling. And then coming up into split stance and then single leg stuff. Yeah. And then we would if that would be the end of the ground base warm up and then we would take it into more of the plyometrics would which would start with. Marching and some different leg movements and then like skipping type exercises. That's where

SPEAKER_01:

you might start breaking a sweat.

SPEAKER_00:

And finally, well, people are breaking a sweat during the lunge. Yeah. By the time we get to the lunges, people are definitely breaking a sweat usually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But it's true. I mean, when you see... Babies, like I remember, because you would point out this a lot when our boys were growing up, but especially our oldest Bennett, the first time we were seeing this, you're like, oh my gosh, it's amazing how he's just picking that ball up, like perfect squat or doing, you know, all these movements perfectly with no effort. And when you look at babies and little kids, you can see like, because without an injury, without, they're just like knowing

SPEAKER_00:

how to do it. They haven't sat in chairs.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That makes sense. They haven't been in school for 20 years. That's the big thing.

SPEAKER_01:

And so like even pick, even now, you know, Bennett will pick up, show how strong he is, pick up some dumbbells in our house and he's got like a 15 pound in either hand or 20 pound in either hand and like does a perfect deadlift picking them up. from the floor, setting them back down.

SPEAKER_03:

Like

SPEAKER_01:

that's like your body weight almost. And it's perfect form. It's amazing. So this makes sense. Like making how babies evolve their movement.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And so don't, you know, as you're sort of listening to this, just know that we're going to attach the, um, the warmup, uh, landing page that we have. So you can actually do this warmup, you know, whenever you want. And you'll hear my voice kind of coaching you through each step because I on the video, I'm doing it with you. So it's 15 minutes. And by the end, you're probably going to be sweating quite a bit, but the ground-based warmup, the first time you do it, it'll probably take you 20 minutes. Cause you'll be thinking about the different exercises and how to do them. But once you've done it a couple of times, you can rock it out and, you know, 10 to 12 minutes. And then you can sort of think about if you're doing an abbreviated warmup, because you just got to get going, you can sort of pick and choose the things that you need to work on the most. So the first thing that we always do, and I recommend this to all, almost every single one of my low back pain patients needs to be doing this. So it's the 90, 90 hip lift. And so basically imagine that you're laying on the floor, you got your heels up on a bench or a chair and your knees are at a 90 degree angle and your hip is to torso is at a 90 degree angle. So that's where the 90, 90 part comes from. What you're going to do is you're going to smash your low back down into the floor, and then you're going to pull your heels down into the chair. And then you're going to squeeze a block between your knees. So what's happening with that? This is how we get our pelvis into an optimal position for loading. And the reason that this works is because both hamstrings are connected to both sides of the pelvis, and then the adductors, which are what you're engaging when you squeeze, are both connected to both sides of the pelvis at the pubis. And so when we smash our low back down, we're creating an anchor point for which then we do the active muscle contraction of the hamstrings and adductors, and we hold that for... five to eight seconds and just building that muscle tension through there, we can realign our pelvis for that optimal position for the workout. So if you've done this, you know, if you've never done this before, it can, sometimes you'll feel a little click and that's your pubis adjusting. And if you're actively in low back pain and, Or you have like particularly like SI joint pain. This can be really beneficial for helping to knock that out because you're helping to get your pelvis into a more aligned position. And then you're going to go and load that next.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And you can see how this could be valuable for everything you,

SPEAKER_00:

every workout

SPEAKER_01:

possible you might do because running, moving your, I mean, your hips, stabilizing your hips and running, squatting.

SPEAKER_00:

And there's just tons of opportunities for us throughout the day to get out of our quote unquote ideal alignment. And then on top of that, we all have different asymmetries and movement preferences that will sort of passively pull us out of alignment and Just as we're doing our day-to-day things. So think about like, you know, you always sit a certain way with your leg crossed and you don't do that on the other side, or you lay, you go to sleep on your left side and drape your right leg over the left. I mean, all of that stuff that you do on a regular basis that you're not symmetrical with is going to be pulling you out of alignment. Think about driving. Right. We all drive with just the right foot. It goes from the accelerator to the brake. So you're, you're constantly like working that leg back and forth. So if you're someone who has to do a lot of carpool or drive around a lot during the day, then you're kind of working that one side. building tension in that one side of your body that you're not doing in the other. And you're doing it in a seated position.

SPEAKER_01:

And your shoulders are hunched over.

SPEAKER_00:

And you're hunched over. And you're on the steering wheel. And you're stressed because someone just cut you in the carpool line. You're all upset. This is what happens to me in the carpool. People are breaking the rules of carpool. There's nothing worse.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, so you do that. What's after 90, 90 walk us through the ground.

SPEAKER_00:

So after, after 90, 90, we're going to start warming up our thoracic spine. So again, the two probably biggest areas that we want to address, and this is the two things that I do. I'll never miss these is I want to make sure my pelvis is in a good alignment. That's the 90, 90. And then the second thing is I want to mobilize my thoracic spine. The thoracic spine has a primary function of mobility. And yet we spend so much time hunched over computers, looking at our phones. that were in that kyphotic rounded shoulders, rounded spine posture, where the spine doesn't have as much available movement. So I want to mobilize my thoracic spine into rotation, also getting some extension there. So I might do some nodding exercises over a foam roller as well. But I'm going to do, I'm going to lay on my side and basically do like a clamshell opener exercise.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Or book opener. What do they call that? Yeah. With

SPEAKER_00:

your arms. I call it just a clamshell. Like you're opening, like your hands are a clamshell and you're just opening up. Okay. I know that can get a little confusing because people will do like clamshells with their knees. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. So you call it like. You leave

SPEAKER_01:

them an arm on the ground. Opening the book. The other one's opening all the way up to the other side.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Now the key with this one is that if you don't, if you're not in 90-90 and you're your top thought, your top knee, isn't a little bit past your bottom knee, then you could be getting a lot of this movement from your lumbar spine. But when you're in the 90, 90 position, so think what the first thing we just described, but now you're just laying on your side in that same position and you still have the block between your knees. So the first two things you can do, you know, you're basically in the same position. You just roll over and lay on your side and you still got that, that block in there.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You move your top knee past the bottom knee just a little bit, which helps to lock out your lumbar spine. Now, when you're doing that book opener, you're not going to move nearly as far, but all of that motion is going to be coming from your thoracic spine.

SPEAKER_01:

And this isn't a flexibility thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. It's not a flexibility thing. We're just trying to get some, we're trying to get some mobilization of a, of an area of the body that's chronically stiff. Now, this is the reason that this is, Oh, so important whenever we're doing any sort of upper body movement is that the shoulder is in its best and optimized position when the shoulders are back and down. And if we're really stiff in the thoracic spine, it's going to lead to us being in a more protracted tipped forward position where there's not as much room underneath the what's called the acromion, which is essentially like the roof of the ball and socket joint. And if there's not adequate room there, you're going to get shoulder impingement or they call it rotator cuff impingement, subacromial impingement, all the same, all the super spinatus impingement, because that's the actual muscle that's being impinged. And once that starts happening, it causes all types of shoulder problems. And a lot of the pain that I see is due to people doing overhead press and particularly they'll do overhead press with a barbell as opposed to doing them with a kettlebell where you have a little bit more like leeway or, or a dumbbell. You have a little bit more leeway on each side or space if your arms aren't connected. But if I'm doing it with a barbell and I'm pressing that barbell overhead and I'm looking in the mirror, I want things to be symmetrical. Well now my right, my right hand has to do exactly what my left hand is doing. And if I have any sort of restriction in the shoulder, um, I'm just jamming right into that. And so we'll see a lot of problems with that because people, we are not symmetrical beings. In fact, we have a giant liver on one side that's occupying where we have an extra lobe on the other side of our lungs. So that means that we inspire more on one side than the other too. So there's all kinds of like little asymmetries in the body. But so we're going to start by, we're going to hit that thoracic spine and then we're going to do some posterior capsule work, which again, this is all in the video that I'm going to have. So basically getting into quadruped, working on mobilizing.

SPEAKER_01:

What's quadruped?

SPEAKER_00:

So quadruped is like hands and knees.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And this is still part of the grounding work.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So part of the ground-based warmup. So we're going to work that posterior capsule. And the reason we do that is because when we sit all day,

SPEAKER_02:

our

SPEAKER_00:

hip joints are are a little bit anterior in the socket. And so our hip flexors are getting tight, our quads are getting tight, and that's all pulling things anterior in the socket. And so a lot of people, especially when they go and they're trying to do deep squats, they'll get pinching in the front of their hips. And that's because they haven't really stretched out the posterior capsule and activated the glutes. So part of this like posterior capsule is we're going to, we're going to sort of deform the ligamentous capsule, which is all around the hip socket. We're going to deform that posterior aspect by getting into this quadruped position, and then we're going to load the glutes. And then we're more likely to have that hip a little bit posterior, which creates a lot more room in the front of the hip. So then we're going to warm up the core. Then we're going to do some lunging exercises. And this lunge in particular is like in a split stance where you're basically just starting off in half kneeling. And then you're going to raise your knee up off the ground just like an inch. So you're loading deep into your movement and holding. Okay, that's tough. Deep in there, yeah. I've seen you do that. Yeah, yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

yeah. And that's just a tough movement.

SPEAKER_00:

And so you're sort of in... in the sort of end range of, you're not in the end range, but you're like well within like a loaded lunge. And then you're holding it with a lot of muscle activation. So again, the main part of this is that we're really warming things up, getting the body hot and, and priming all of the movements that we're going to be doing later.

SPEAKER_01:

Is that the, the, that's the end of the the groundwork?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, there's a couple other things in there. There's a couple of core things in there. It's, you know, it's like eight exercises, but

SPEAKER_01:

I'm, I'm curious, like if someone's short on time, is it better to do them all with less reps or less time of each exercise? Would you prefer that? Or is there, are there ones that might be more valuable?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. For one, if you're short on time, don't waste time. Just move fast.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So like get into positions and then like get to the next thing, like really quick. But if I was going to prioritize, you know, two or three, I would say definitely hit the 90, 90, definitely work on your thoracic spine and then get into those lunge positions because that's going to really sort of help warm up the legs and you can really sort of pulse that out and then start to hit your, and the last one is just that single leg deadlift and getting in, getting into that position and really, um, flossing those in ranges because we can have a lot of neurological tightness and, you know, people often don't think about tightness of the actual spinal cord, but that can lead to a lot of muscle inhibition where we just can't get into certain movements, certain positions, because we're really tight. And for instance, like our sciatic nerve distribution. So, you know, the spinal cord is coming down. from the brainstem all the way down to L2, where it transitions into what's called the cauda equina, which is, if you think it's called the horse's tail, but all the nerves stop being one thick, like bundle, like you'd imagine the spinal cord. And then it fans out into like a, literally like it looks like a horse's tail of all the nerves. And then those will go down the posterior aspect. Um, and the anterior aspect too, but the ones that tend to get really tight are the sciatic nerve distribution, which is down the back of the leg.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I will say, you know, I was having last year some thoracic back issues with, I think, because I was doing more heavy lifting and strength training. And then I started doing those openers for my warm-up, and I haven't had any of those issues since. So maybe that's one of the reasons why. Get into more form, one thing. Yeah, you did one thing. That's good. So what would constitute the active portion of the warm-up, let's say, for a gym-based strength workout?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that would be it. All of those, all of those. Yeah. So that, that's all. That's the whole you're

SPEAKER_01:

thinking about.

SPEAKER_00:

That's the whole world. Just that ground-based part. And it's going to take like, you know, like I said, between 10 and 12 minutes. And then if you were going to go do more of a field sprinting thing, that's when you're going to start hitting like marches, some side to side movement, and then a series of skips. And then ultimately ending in some different, uh, form-based running, longer runs, and then building up to your sprints and things like that. And by that time, you should be plenty warmed up and ready to start getting into your more sport-specific drills. But obviously, the warm-up should be thought of as sort of on a spectrum where you're doing the ground-based warm-up, then you're doing your more plyometric stuff, and then before you go straight into a scrimmage, you're probably going to do some some drills or some things that are replicating your sport specific movements. And then finally getting into active play, which is, you know, your scrimmage or your game.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So the final thing I want to talk about is what you should do. If you feel pain while you're doing your workout, because a lot of people, you know, they'll start doing a workout, they'll do their warmup and they get into their first or second movement. Maybe they're stiff from a previous workout and And they're like, oh no, I can't do this. Or I guess I'm not dead lifting today because I'm feeling a little bit of a tweak in my back. Or today's a knee dominant day and I'm feeling a little bit of pain in my knee. Right. And they're just ready to abandon that workout for the day. My suggestion is always start the, you know, do your warmup, start your exercises. If you do feel pain, stop, do a little mini treatment on yourself and So maybe if you're having knee pain, then you're doing a little bit of quad foam rolling. Right. If you're having some low back pain, maybe you mobilize your thoracic spine again or do a little bit of glute foam rolling, things like that. And then go right back to the movement that was giving you pain. Give it another couple of reps. See if things have improved because often they will. And then you can just continue right through your workout. But if your pain is continuing to increase, that's when you're going to make either a different plan for your workout, or if you're just not able to get around your pain at all, then that's when you might say, hey, I need to do something else today. And maybe you're doing more of a recovery style workout. And it's okay. We got to listen to our bodies because if you are having a lot of pain, it's not that beneficial to lay down a bunch of muscle memory on a system that is likely compensating for that pain that you're having because you're going to move different if you're in pain. Yeah. So it's not that, it's not that beneficial for you to go ahead and like go through with a workout if you're having a lot of pain.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. But that's why it's important to test either yourself or go to a PT because I think the easy thing is if, you know, a lot of people go to a PCP or something and they're like, Oh yeah, stop moving. Whatever hurts it. Here's some medicine, like take some Advil or take this.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

get a, you know, cortisone injection or whatever, but you as a PD might really want them to move, but there could be times where you do want them to, to lay off that certain movement, but it doesn't mean don't exercise and don't do this at all. You want them to move.

SPEAKER_00:

And I'll, I'll take it even one step further. You might go to your PCP. You might even go to an orthopedist and they might say, don't ever run again.

SPEAKER_01:

You've had patients say that, right? Yeah, and it's great. They said, I should never run again. I should never do this sport again. I will never do it again.

SPEAKER_00:

And they get an x-ray and there shows some hip degeneration or some knee degeneration. They're like, yep, tread on the tires. You've worn it out and you should pick a different activity. But running is your life. Your sport is what brings you joy. And so before you decide to quit... You should find a movement expert and think about how you can get stronger and really support that joint in a more functional way. And maybe there's just a small limitation in there that you need to iron out before you can really get into it. Put that in your warmup.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And then start doing your exercise again. Get right back on track. But you're right. I mean, I can't tell you how many times people have this idea that the body is... is fixed and people have this idea that the body is not able to heal itself and not able to continue to do movement. Our cells are

SPEAKER_01:

regenerating every, all the time. Yeah. We should be

SPEAKER_00:

able to. I forget what it is exactly, but it's like every like 10 or 12 weeks, like you have like a whole new arm. Yeah. Like every two to

SPEAKER_01:

three months. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's like something crazy. Like the cells have completely, um, regenerated. So,

SPEAKER_01:

but I think that's a good takeaway. This, the warmup is, you know, this functional warmup, you can do things that are going to help your body longterm as well as get the most out of your workout, even if you have a short amount of time. And so we'll link it in the, uh,

SPEAKER_00:

in the show

SPEAKER_01:

notes, so you can use it. There's videos, there's talking, it could really be helpful. Then you'll get in the groove of it and memorize it and you can do it every time. And you can think of us. And you can think of us. At Chain Effect.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. Well, thank you guys so much for listening. And if you could do us one favor that really helps our podcast, if you know someone who just never warms up and is always complaining about being injured, send them a text message with this link in the message. And you can also email me at taylor at chaineffect.com. or caroline at caroline at chaineffect.com. And we'll catch you next time.

SPEAKER_01:

All right. Thanks for listening.