No Bullsh*t: Is Your Prehabilitation/Warm Up Actually Hurting You?

When I first started training in high school, I didn't know anything about prehabilitation or warming up. Like many youngsters first starting out, I walked into the gym and just started lifting. If I did any amount of warming up, it was usually just some static stretching like we did for football (I still shake my head at this).

It wasn’t until college that I was actually introduced to some sort of dynamic warm up, although I didn’t have any deep understanding of the concept. As I learned and grew from a player into a coach and my education continued, I gained a deeper understanding of different warm-up and prehabilitation techniques. Like many trainers, I put a lot of time and effort into developing the best warm ups and quality prehabilitation exercises to help prepare my clients for their training sessions while keeping them healthy.

Lately, I've been evaluating some of these methods and have come to the conclusion that I, and many others, may have actually been doing more harm than good. I have come to these conclusions based on several different methods. First, I've evaluated my own training and the training of all my team members and clients. Secondly, I've talked with, listened to, or read articles written by Dave Tate and Buddy Morris. Finally, I've read literature written by many men smarter than myself. To clarify, I'm referring to warming up for weight training, specifically powerlifting, not other sporting activities.

A simplified definition of a warm-up is a training period at the beginning of a training session designed to prepare an individual for the upcoming demands of said training session. In Vladimir Issurin’s book Block Periodization, he defines three major objectives for a warm-up: metabolic adjustment, technique and coordination adjustment, and attainment of mental readiness. This is an important concept to really look into because while your warm-up should meet all these objectives effectively, it doesn’t need to accomplish anything more than this. I find that many people lay on one side or the other of this goal. They either walk into the gym after sitting in a desk all day and immediately start lifting or they come in and do a 30-minute warm up routine with every gizmo and gadget possible. From my experiences, the first group ends up suffering from extreme immobility (i.e. can’t open their hips or externally rotate their shoulders), and the second group has a nervous system that is “confused” by the time they start their actual training.

It is important to remember that your body will adapt to any stimulus placed upon it (i.e. everything you're doing during your training) and this includes your warm up. With this in mind, the true goal of any warm-up is to prepare you for the main training stimulus of that day. In other words, if you are squatting heavy that day, the training period prior to your heaviest squat needs to be solely focused on progressively preparing you for that task and nothing else. Again, you must meet the three objectives established earlier in this article through two warm-up phases: general warm-ups and specific warm-ups. Using our previous example, we can break this down into anything that isn’t a squat (general) and anything that is a squat (specific).

Before going into what a quality warm-up may look like, let’s look at some common things I think should be stripped from most warm-ups.

Tissue work (i.e. foam rolling):

First, let me say that I don’t think all tissue work prior to lifting is a bad idea. There are many massage techniques that can be used to help better prepare the body for training (you can read about these in Russian Sports Restoration and Massage by Yessis). However, foam rolling isn't one of these. Putting high amounts of single point pressure on your muscles causes a lot of communication back and forth between your brain and your muscles. Because this communication isn’t about how to squat better (improved technique), the nervous system can get confused and worn out (think of how tired you were after you foam rolled for the first time).

Also, the muscles aren't asked to lengthen and contract during a squat (longitudinally) the way they are during foam rolling (single-point pressure). While tissue work does do a great job of breaking up muscular and fascial adhesions, increasing blood flow and oxygen/Co2 exchange, and many other things, I believe it is better served after your workout, as a separate training session earlier in the day, or as a recovery session the following day.

Joint mobilizations:

There isn't any doubt that you need a decent amount of joint mobility to correctly perform the three major lifts. I just don’t think that the best time to increase this is prior to your heavy training sessions. Joints will either lean toward being mobile or being stable, and when it comes to putting heavy weight on your back or in your hands, I feel that it’s better to lean toward making them more stable. That being said, if you can’t go through the range-of-motion necessary to complete the movement safely and efficiently, you probably need to spend some time focusing on that and not throwing it in your warm-up right before you squat heavy and mess it back up. As said with tissue work, joint mobilizations will begin a line of communication between your nervous system and your muscles. I don’t think that’s a good message to send prior to a major lifting session. Instead, I think these are better served as a main focus for a specific training block or at the very least, as a separate training session.

Isolation activation exercises:

I'm plenty guilty of doing activation movements prior to my major lifts, trying to get certain muscles to fire better. However, I question the effectiveness of these movements because during the main movements, they most definitely won't be isolated. These movements include TKEs for your VMO, seated band abductions for hip abductors and external rotators, and band pull-aparts for upper back and posterior delt activation. Instead, I think it would be better to perform these in a more specific way during the main movement like putting a band around your knees while performing your bar warm-ups for hip activation or around your wrists during bench for upper back activation. I feel as though this has a much better carryover to the actual lift. The isolation movements can still be done after the main movement or as a main movement if there is an injury that you're recovering from.

Long-duration warm-ups:

Nothing shoots down my desire to train more than taking 30 minutes to warm-up doing all kinds of different movements and exercises. I believe part of the reason for this is that the nervous system gets pulled in multiple directions and gets fatigued. Doing five minutes on the bike, five minutes of foam rolling, five minutes of dynamic warm-ups, five minutes of joint mobilization, and then five minutes of activation exercises before ever touching a barbell will result in a giant WTF from your nervous system because they're each sending different messages. Also, most people walk into the gym with their main movement on their mind. It’s hard to keep your focus and stay psyched for your major lift when you spend so much time doing a bunch of boring warm-up activities.

Again, all these activities serve a purpose and can be extremely effective when used intelligently. I suggest looking at yourself and your own training to determine what you really need to be doing to prepare for training. I'm definitely not suggesting that you don't do any warm-up. I feel that is by far the greater of the two evils because I see so many guys and girls who do this. While they can be strong, they put major limits on their capabilities because of their lack of preparedness. If you need more mobility and you have some tissue limitations, take a training cycle to address these issues. At the very least, do a few separate and short (15–30 minutes) training sessions to address these issues. If you suffered an injury or have a major muscular imbalance, do the same thing with some activation work. However, if you're relatively healthy and don’t suffer any major malfunctions, let me suggest the following warm-up as a better alternative.

This warm-up will get you under the bar in ten minutes or less and have you hitting your heavier working sets in 20–30 minutes, depending on rest time between sets. It effectively addresses all three objectives without any wasted time or movements. Give it a try and let me know what you think.