Components of a good warm-up

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Ciao fellow fitness lovers! Welcome to an exciting exercise post on the warm-up and how to structure a stellar sweat- inducer so that you get the most out of your workout. 

In this post I’ll break down the structure of a good warm-up, listing out the factors that you can check off, and then provide a guideline for a generic upper and lower body warm-up you can use in your next workout. 

Starting things off with the factors involved:

  1. General full body warm-up. This section is designed to get the blood pumping through the whole body. You should begin to break a decent sweat without getting fatigued. This section should last anywhere from 2-4 minutes.

  2. Dynamic stretching. This last section is meant to be dynamic (hence the name) rather than static stretching. This kind of stretching involves using the muscles themselves to bring about a stretch. Let’s use a lower body example this time: you could alternate between low lunge and half split for 5-10 reps moving slowly and deliberately to gently loosen the body. This section can take anywhere from 3-5 minutes depending on how in-depth you want to train each muscle area.

  3. Area specific warm-up and activation. Next, you can begin to narrow in on the area you plan to train that day. Let’s say you plan to train upper body, this part of your warm-up will focus on loosening up and working into the areas (chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, back) you’ll be exercising. You can spend anywhere from 5-10 minutes on this section as it will blend nicely into the bulk of your training.

The goal of these three components is to break a sweat within the body, work all angles of the muscle region, and to target the areas that are going to be worked in your training. All-in-all, this kind of warm-up could take anywhere from 10-15 minutes. Feel free to adjust the length to the type of training you’re going to be doing. If you just plan to do full body HIIT, for example, then maybe you can combine steps 2 and 3, stretching dynamically into the whole body. 

Sun salutations are one of my favorite ways to stretch into the whole body. I’d recommend running through 3-6 of them to really get the blood pumping. If you are unfamiliar with sun salutations, check out the morning stretch video I made here. 

Now, let’s get into some generic lower and upper body warm-ups you can use in your next training:

Sample lower body warm-up:

          • Jump rope/ high knees/ butt kicks 2-3 minutes.

          • Sun Salutation A x3-6

          • Low lunge —> half split x4-6 each leg

          • Yogi squat x30 seconds

          • Glute bridges (hip thrusts) x10-20 (on the floor)

          • Air squats x10-20

          • Split squats x10-20 each leg

After running through this series your leggies should be pretty fired up and ready for whatever training you are going to throw their way.

Sample upper body warm-up 

I’ve actually put together a video with some simple movements you can do to build strength in the upper body as well as some mobility drills that I will publish this Thursday on my YouTube Channel so stay tuned :)

The only thing I will add to that video is to fit in the full-body part at the beginning. A few ideas for the upper body include: burpees, jumping jacks, jumping rope and sun salutations. 

I hope that you all enjoyed this week’s post and can take something away for your next workout. Warming up the body sufficiently before exercising will help to prevent injury, work into new areas, and recruit the muscles more fully. 

If you have any warm-up tips of your own, or anything I missed here, please let me know in the comments down below or send them over to my instagram @alexandratempletonfit. 

See you all here next Tuesday for a fresh blog!

Xoxo,

Alexandra