Workout of The Week (#70)

Your Workout Is My Warmup

“Our warmups are like most people’s workouts.” A comment from one of my group training clients yesterday. “Your workout is our warmup” was a phrase a lot of crossfit gyms began to popularize. It sounds pretentious, but it’s also a badge of honor. Many people have willy nilly workouts that are performed without structure or intensity. How you warmup can also benefit your training.

When new trainees think of warming up all that really comes to mind is raising their body temperature, i.e., literally getting warmer. However, this is only one component of a good warmup. A good warmup prepares your joints and tissues for the work at hand, it starts releasing the enzymes you’ll need to efficiently produce energy for your workout, and lights up the nervous to function at a higher level.

My warmups years ago were very brief or non existent because I use to believe they just made me tired for the workout but I found the opposite to be true. The more I got more heart rate going during the warmup, the better my workouts got. At first you may experience a drop in performance, this is primarily due to lack of general physical preparation or, to be frank, you’re just out of shape.

My new clients often begin with a simple full body warmup that’s 3 rounds of 10 squats, 10 inverted rows, and 10 pushups. At first, they think of it as a workout but after a couple weeks it begins to feel like a warmup and they bang it out in way less time. Use the warmup to build your general conditioning, prepardness, and to improve your sessions. You can also add mobility and remedial exercises to the warmup to beef up deficiencies before your session begins.

The Workout

Pushup x 20, 15, 10, 5

Kettlebell Swing x 10, 10, 10, 10

Inverted Row x 20, 15, 10, 5

Kettlebell Swing x 10, 10, 10, 10

Quick hitter. Do 10 swings between the reps of pushups and inverted rows. Swing as heavy bell as possible. Unless you’re frail or a child, you shouldn’t be swinging anything less than a 30 lb kettlebell. That’s often the biggest mistake I see when people use kettlebells, people go way too light. Use your hips and swing some big bells.

We got a lot of new subscribers lately, if you want some freebies like my nutrition manual, lean for life playbook, bench program, and many more, click the button below and fill the form.