Want To Train Hard? Do The Warm Up

Who doesn’t like training hard, pushing themselves in the gym, and seeing what they are capable of? I’m sure there are people out there who would hop in line once science gets to the point of genetically modifying people to their goal physique, strength, and performance. Then there are the people who would still log those long hours in the gym, earning their own personal records. I would venture to say that if you are reading this article, you are in the latter population. 

I mean, what beats the feeling of unracking a heavy squat you have never touched before? Your nerves are going crazy telling you it’s too heavy, but you take it out of the hooks anyway. You grip the bar with your chalked-up hands, and feel that knurling dig into those calluses. You tighten that upper back so the barbell has a nice shelf to sit on. You breathe into your belly and feel that little space between you and your lifting belt disappear. You tighten your core like you were about to absorb a cannonball blast. The pressure in your head and torso is enough to quiet those voices telling you to rerack the weight. The nervousness leaves, and confidence shows up as you start the descent into the squat. You slam those hamstrings to your calves for a full range of motion, and start ascending out of the hole. The bar speed slows down, but you have no choice but to keep pushing. You pass halfway; the rep is almost finished. You stay tight; your knees and hips lock out. You did it; those feelings of doubt are replaced with feelings of invincibility. You walk that barbell back into the rack, dump it into the hooks, and it's time to celebrate. Nothing beats that feeling in the gym. 

Training hard is awesome; being able to train hard is a privilege. Let’s say you decided to skip that warm-up though… You ignore the warm-up and activation you were supposed to do because YOLO or whatever the kids are saying now. You jump right into squatting; your hips are tight, your upper back feels locked up, and every time you take a squat, something feels wrong. “I’m not soft!” you tell yourself as you keep piling on more weight. It's the top set time. You unrack it; the barbell isn’t sitting right on your back, knees feel funky on the way down, hips won’t let you get to depth. Best-case scenario, you still hit the weight and celebrate the personal record (this now justifies skipping the warm-up). Worst case, a muscle decides to check out and is no longer attached where it's supposed to be. You dump the bar after making a banshee scream while the weights bounce around the rack. Your first thought isn't, "Am I okay?" It's, "Great...now I need a new gym because I can never show my face here again. Then it is wondering if you would have found yourself stapled under a squat bar if you took the 5-10 minutes to actually warm up and mobilize (I mean maybe, but there is inherent risk with any workout, but you can lower that risk by properly WARMING UP). 

If you are laid up with an injury, the kick-you-while-you’re-down fact is that you can’t train hard, at least not like you were before injury. This became evident to me shortly after I started working out. My brother Dom and I considered ourselves iron warriors; I mean, we were doing workouts out of Arnold’s book, so we were pretty much experts. My dad decided it was time to “get back into it” again. He trained when we were really small kids, but stopped for years until Dom and I were training in the basement. He had this crazy methodology that was nothing like what we saw in Arnold’s book. “3 sets, that’s it, a set of 5, a set of 3, and a set of 1, no warm up.” Every exercise followed that format, yes, every. Single. Exercise. 

My dad at the time was much stronger than us early teenagers, and by the unwritten rules of the weight room, we had to listen to the big guy at the gym (it was just us 3 to clarify). We got stronger for a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months. No regard for form, literally just concern for adding more weight to each of our sets from week to week. No deload, no warm-up, no change of set or rep schemes, literally the same bastardized version of Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 program. As the weight got heavier, our form got sloppier, but we didn’t care because we were piling on more weight every week and we were benching the most out of anyone in our grade. This was before we learned that squatting was the king, obviously. 

I’ll never forget these two weeks of “training.” We were bench pressing; I started with 135 on the bar and bounced it off my chest 5 times. Then 225 was loaded onto the bar; I unracked it and attempted to bounce it off my chest 3 times (spotter helped it up all three reps). Then it was time for my top set; I wanted 315, so we cranked the homemade stereo system I built with System of a Down. I was told to “get pissed.” I got under the bar, pulled it out of the rack, and the second I had any bend in my elbow, it plummeted to my chest. Then I performed a weird version of the worm and Michael Jackson’s Beat It dance moves in an attempt to get this weight off my chest. My dad again had to pull it off of me (big surprise I couldn’t even do 225). The only thing that hurt that day was my pride, but I told myself next week would be my week.

The following week came around; I couldn’t care less about anything else except International Chest Day coming up. The same protocol was on the workout plan, or so I thought. Set one, 5 reps at 135, set two, three reps at 225 bounced off my chest, and then hopefully set three, one rep at 315. I remember the first set felt exceptionally hard that day. But, you guessed it, we turned the music up louder and “got pissed.” As if a 14-year-old had much to get angry about. Next up, 225, unracked and immediately got stapled to my chest; even my dance moves couldn’t budge it. But I obviously had to go up in weight; I had been looking forward to this all week, and I almost had it last week (I literally did not). So, my brother and I loaded up the third plate on each side, and I sat on the edge of the bench “getting more pissed.” My dad slid a 10 onto each side while I was doing this ritual. 

Show time: I laid back, gripped the bar, and gave my countdown for the lift-off. The second my dad let go of the bar, it seemed like gravity doubled, and I was met with this weird feeling in my left pec; then all of a sudden the barbell was squeezing the air out of my rib cage. After having the barbell lifted off of my chest, I realized something was off. There wasn’t a bruise or any swelling, but my left pec was throbbing. I couldn’t do a push-up without it hurting.

Fast forward a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months, and I have full range of motion, pain-free. My old man stopped working out shortly after I hurt myself, and so it was Dom and I back in the basement by ourselves. We had gotten this obsession with doing pull-ups. There was a Boy Scout house down the road from us with a pull-up bar, so almost every day we would walk down and get some pull-ups in and then go train in the basement. We noticed something. After walking about a half mile, getting some sets of pull-ups in, and then starting our training session, we felt better. We had a slight running sweat going before we touched a barbell. 

Our lifts were progressing like never before, still not great form but hey better than it was. We had no idea how to explain it, but we got superstitious about our pull-ups. We would not dare touch a barbell without our walk and pull-ups again. I did not want to get laid out for a couple of months again. I realized that although I had just started training, lifting was now a necessary part of my life, and I didn’t feel right without it. I knew, even then, that if I were injured, I couldn’t train hard like I wanted. 

Long story short, I learned a valuable lesson: do the freaking warm-up. It serves a purpose. Here's what's actually happening. A good general warm-up raises your body temperature so your muscles contract faster and produce more force. Your joints and connective tissue become less stiff, making it easier to move through full ranges of motion. Then your dynamic warm-up builds on that by taking those tissues through the movement patterns you'll actually use under the bar. Finally, your ramp-up sets let you dial in technique and figure out whether today is a day to push hard or adjust the plan. 

It doesn’t need to take you an hour. My warm-up now takes about 10 minutes, and I am ready to hit the weights hard after that. Don’t let an injury be the wake-up call that finally convinces you to take your warm-up seriously. It’s there for a reason.