TRANSCRIPT:

Today, we’re talking about WARMING UP and preparing our bodies for movement.

Your warm-up can truly make or break how you feel both during and after your workout. Even when you have limited time to train, do your body a big favor and take the time to warm-up properly.

Your warm-up isn’t about a generic set of exercises you tick off before each workout, some leg and arm swings, or a random stretch or two you remember from P.E.

Instead, your warm-up should prepare your body for the actual workout ahead, and prime your body for movement. We want to prep our muscles, joints and nervous system so we feel strong, mobile and ready to train.

So, what makes a good warm-up? Let’s talk about 3 key pieces: mobilize, activate, and prime.

First, we want to mobilize our joints – meaning, taking them through their full range of motion – so we can loosen things up, in order to create better movement quality.

Later in the week, we’ll talk about WHY training through our full range of motion is important (and thus, why mobilizing our joints in advance is the first step). Just know mobilization is an important thing before any strength training workout.

Next, we want to activate our muscles and prime the movement patterns we’ll be doing. In other words, we want to wake up the muscles we’ll be using, and start moving in a way that mimics our workout.

For instance, if we’re squatting in that day’s session, we might add in bodyweight squats, or other similar movements, to get our body familiar with the pattern before we load it up.

Activating our muscles and priming movement patterns communicate with our nervous system, “Hey, we’re going to be using these muscles, and moving in this way.” A strong mind-muscle connection not only makes movement more effective, it helps prevent injuries. This is huge! There are no sneak attacks from random movements out of nowhere.

When we warm up with intention, we move better, lift better, and feel better – both in our workouts and after them.

Now let’s put this into action. Today, I’ll be guiding you through a warm-up that prepares the entire body for a strength session. But before we get there, let’s go over a few common terms you’ll see in strength workouts.

Reps or Repetitions refers to the number of times you perform a movement before taking a break. For example, if you do 10 squats in a row, that’s 10 reps.

Sets is a group of reps performed together. If you do 10 squats, rest, and then do another 10, you’ve done 2 sets of 10 reps.

Rest refers to the time you take between sets to recover. This allows your muscles to reset so you can perform well in the next round.

Now that you’re familiar with these basics, let’s dive into our warm-up. Get your comfies on and let’s move!