Walk into any gym and you will see people who completely neglect their warm-up. Others spend 45 minutes or more on the foam roller, stretching with bands, or torturing themselves with lacrosse balls. So what is the deal with warming up before a training session?

The purpose of the warm-up is to prepare your body, mentally and physically, for the upcoming training session, practice, or competition. When done properly, your warm-up will improve your performance and lessen your chances of injury.

The Benefits of a Proper Warm-Up

The positive effects of a warm-up occur with an active form.  Passive or static stretching does not get the same results. It’s better to stretch after your workout.  Many of the positive effects of a warm-up happen through temperature-related effects.

Temperature-related effects include increased muscle temperature, core temperature, enhanced nervous system function, and improved connective tissue flexibility. Non–temperature-related effects include increased blood flow to muscles, improved oxygen consumption, and improved muscle contractions.

Other physiological and performance benefits include:

• Faster muscle contraction and relaxation
• Improved rate of force development
• Faster reaction time
• Improved muscle strength and power
• Lower stiffness in your muscles and joints
• Improved oxygen delivery to your working muscles
• Increased blood flow to your working muscles
• Increased psychological preparedness

The Basic Phases of an Effective Warm-Up

There are 2 basic phases to a well-designed warm-up. These are the general and specific warm-ups.

The General Warm-Up

The general warm-up typically consists of 5 minutes of slow aerobic activity like jogging, skipping, or cycling. This phase aims to increase your heart rate, blood flow, muscle temperature, breathing rate, and joint mobility. This is followed by general mobility exercises that replicate the movements required for your upcoming training session.

The Specific Warm-Up

This phase incorporates movements even more similar to the movements of your sport or training session. This includes rehearsal of the skill(s) to be performed. It is recommended the specific warm-up last 10 to 20 minutes with no more than 15 minutes between the end of the warm-up and the start of your activity (training session or competition).

The warm-up for a game or competition aims to maximize performance in the subsequent event. However, for the training session, in addition to optimizing acute performance during the session, the specific warm-up should contribute to your overall long-term development as an athlete. This is an ideal time to incorporate individualized corrective exercise into your program. For the baseball pitcher, this may include rotator cuff activation exercises such as diagonal patterns with resistance bands.

Structure Your Warm-Up to Optimize Short and Long-Term Performance

Effective warm-ups should be thought of as an integral part of your training session, not as a separate entity.  Raise, Activate, Mobilize, and Potentiate (RAMP) is an acronym used to describe a more detailed approach. This builds on the general and specific structure and maximizes both acute and long-term performance.

Raise

This phase is similar to the general warm-up and aims to elevate your body temperature, heart rate, respiration rate, blood flow, and joint mobility through low-intensity activities.

General aerobic exercises, like cycling or the elliptical trainer, are inserted here. However, it is more beneficial to simulate the movement patterns of your upcoming activity or develop the movement patterns or skills you will need within your sport.

Instead of treadmill jogging before a squat session, perform walking lunges to prepare physically and psychologically. In this way, your training session, from the start of the warm-up, is targeted at key movement patterns and skills and not just aerobic capacity.

Activating and Mobilizing

Activating and mobilizing refers to the stretching part of a warm-up. Perform key movement patterns required in your training session or sport here. This might include corrective exercises for core stabilization or dynamic mobility drills.

Incorporate static stretching as a corrective exercise if specific deficits exist. Baseball players will insert static stretches for the lats, forearms, or rotator cuff. Any decrement in subsequent strength or power from static stretching is likely very short-lasting.

Performing dynamic warm-up activities following static stretching will override any small transient performance decrements. The focus of mobility exercise is always on actively moving through a range of motion, not static stretching. Dynamic stretches are extremely time-efficient. Before overhead pressing with the bar, try warming up with 20 reps of a door slide exercise or band external rotation to press.

Potentiation

Potentiation refers to the specific warm-up and focuses on the intensity of activities. This phase incorporates specific activities that progress in intensity until you are performing at the intensity required for your training session.

Do not skip this phase. It is common to see an athlete proceed from a stretching exercise directly into their first working set of a squat or Olympic lift. This only compromises strength and power output.

There is strong evidence showing that high-load dynamic warm-ups enhance subsequent power and strength performance. The more power necessary for the exercise or activity, the more important the potentiation phase of the warm-up becomes. The objective is to include high-intensity dynamic exercises to prepare your nervous system.  Exercises that include short bouts of high-intensity sprints, jumps or throws are ideal.  Try a few sets of 2-3 plyometric jumps performed before getting under the bar for squats.

RAMP Up Your Warm-Ups

Many athletes or fitness enthusiasts are unaware of the optimal structure and performance benefits related to a proper warm-up. The RAMP protocol is a great foundation to structure your warm-up. More importantly, any properly designed warm-up should prepare your body for the subsequent training session.  If you are looking for performance gains for your next training sessions and the long term, get serious about warming up.

Your physical therapist will help you develop an individualized warm-up program.  Your physical therapist will fully evaluate your strength, mobility, and movement patterns to determine what the best strategy is.  Call our office to get started.  The doctors of physical therapy at BSR have been helping people in Southern Ocean County move without pain since 2007.  We are here to help you.