Do You Feel Warmups Are Really Necessary?

[Rick Walker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmXmdKF65Bg

Nuff said...

[Chez]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmXmdKF65Bg

Nuff said...

haha, Well played.

[Wayne]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmXmdKF65Bg

Nuff said...

Oh I see what you did there. In the movie right after that scene they go down the hill to open the truck and there is not a single twinkie inside. It's nothing but snow balls! So the moral here is if you don't limber up you're headed for disappointment. Good post, Rick

[Josh O'Dell]

Thats a very good point!

[Rick Walker]

I guess the moral can be anything you want.

When the zombies come, you aren't going to have time to warm-up. Luckily for me my trigger finger doesn't need much in the way of stretching.

Or, maybe the moral is don't expect Twinkies because you will only be dissatisfied with snow balls.

Or it could be to not worry about warming up and just do what ever the hell you want to do with your training.

Warm up, don't. What does it matter? Everyone is different, if it works, do it! If it doesn't, don't! We try and turn this stuff into rocket science and explain why you should or shouldn't do something. Does a cop who pulls over a driver warm-up before he gets into a life or death fight or an all out sprint if it turns into a foot chase? Does a fireman warm-up before he carries out a full grown person from a smoke filled building? Does a soldier warm-up before he finds himself deep in a firefight? No. They just react.

I have heard that most heart attacks occur in Corrections Officers after running to respond to a fight or a staff assault, not the assault itself. So when I dig deeper into that I discovered because the giant increase in heart rate from resting to all out exertion was too much for them to handle and something had to give.

This was basically the same speech that was given at an Elite Fitness Seminar I went to in 2007 about Prowler pushing. That 15-20 seconds of all out exertion, followed by recovery, was actually far better for your health then 60 minutes of walking or jogging. It basically prepares the heart for immediate action.

The same can be said for training. I hit better grip lifts cold. Could I just deadlift or squat heavy cold? I don't know. Possibly. Never tried it much. In my youth I used to drink 12 beers then go out and load the squat bar to 500 and squat it cold. Never got hurt, and usually made the lift. I also used to load the bench bar to 315 and handle it cold as well with one tied on.

Train how you want to train. I just want to be able to train! With a full time job, a wife, a hobby that I LOVE: fishing, and 4 kids, I don't have a whole lot of time to warm-up and stretch for 20 minutes. If I can get 20 total minutes in in a day, I am happy.

This is a very long debate on a very simple topic. Do or do not.

[Josh O'Dell]

I was a cop and thats a very true way to look at it.

[hellswindstaff]

"Warm up" sets or "Working up" in resistance adds to strength endurance and totaled volume, but is time consuming. Pavel teaches that as long as you've been mobile that it's fine to walk up to a 85%+ set without warm up. Personally I do think that warm ups prime the body, but in emergency situations you do not always get the privilege of a warm up and by training warm ups you train the body to need a warm up. Then again, I would definitely want one before an attempt if competing in a meet.

Also, a warm up is used to prime the body, but what is the cut off between "primed" and "fight or flight"? Are they the same things only separated by different degrees of intensity? I was once robbed at gunpoint by two gunmen and ran away, I doubt Usain Bolt could have out sprinted me that night.

[Stephen Ruby]

Those examples are still limiting maximum potential by not warming up. Sure in a life or death situation the brain triggers lots of different chemicals to allow you to perform as best as you can given the circumstances. Yet the science is pretty solid that warming up the body helps with maximum strength or power.

So if you choose to not warm up you are always going to be limiting your full potential. You could still not do a warm up and get a good workout in and make progress. Warm up doesn't have to take 20 minutes either it could just be as simple ad doing a few light sets before a maximum effort set.

Edited June 29, 2013 by Stephen Ruby

[Josh O'Dell]

I mean it dont take long to warm up i dont see what the point of this post is anymore

[jchapman]

Law Enforcement Officers don't warm-up before an encounter because they have no choice. I assumed we were talking about warm-ups during training.

[Josh O'Dell]

By the time a chased someone down i was plenty warmed up for a fight, being in shape saves your butt no matter what you are and

[Josh O'Dell]

Far as warming up i will always do it but you no what i would rather see people get excercise without warm ups instead of none at all because when it comes down to it excercise is for are well being.

[Josh O'Dell]

Back when i could run like a machine ha ha

[Guest Squat More]

For strength training, and most grip training I would say that yes warmups are VERY important, except for grippers, for me.

[steve0]

For grippers I usually don't do warmups

[Josh O'Dell]

I guess i kinda warm up with the coc 2;

Call it what you will

[David_wigren]

Warm ups is good for injury prevention and getting the CNS primed for heavy training. The argument that gazelles or cheetahs don't warm up is nonsensical primarily for a couple of reasons. The primary reason is that we humans and cheetahs have had very different evolutionary pressure over the last few million years. Cheetahs chase fast prey (gazelles) and If a cheetahs gets injured, it will die and be unable to produce offspring. So after many millions of years the cheetahs have been conditioned for fast running with low risk of injury. We humans have not had the same evolutionary pressure, there have not been many fast animals chasing us for the past couple of millions of years. We are better adapted for long distance running. If a human gets injured, it will in most cases still be able to survive and produce offspring. Secondly, gazelles and cheetahs do not live for 80 years, humans do, and thus we have alot more time to accumulate damage and get injured over time.

I also would like to say that training without warmups do not make you less likely to suffer injury if you have to lift heavy in real life. In fact it probably increases it since your joints and ligament is probably more worn down than someone who has taken the time to warm up.

[Rick Walker]

The video clip was funny. It was meant to elicit a LAUGH in people.

As I said, we are all different animals. What works or doesn't work for me might not work for you.

I am not sure how many people were actually talking about all out maximum efforts. Should you do something before you pull 700? Probably. How much does it change performance? I don't know. I don't worry about it, mostly because I cant pull 700 anymore.

I know squatting prior to squeezing a gripper always leads to a much bigger gripper close. The 2 aren't really connected, but it always works. People can spout the CNS crap, and I used to hang my hat on that as well, but I think that is all a bunch of crap anymore.

The most interesting experiment was when I was doing nothing by yoga for months. Every time I would take my son down to the gym to train I would smash my #3 cold. Never missed it once. Stopped doing Yoga and started Insanity and couldn't touch the gripper. Hmmm. Weird. Yoga certainly is not specific to grip work! No hand work involved at all. But was yoga the warm-up I needed to increase grip performance?? Who knows. Who cares. It worked.

We spend so much time "discussing" stuff when we could just be doing it. Find something that works, share it. That is what these forums are for, right? If doing 20 sets of squats working up to your max works, then do it! When I was powerlifting my warm-ups were 135x5, 225x5, 315x1, 405x1, briefs on 495x1, 585x1, 650x1, suit on 650-675x1, then my 1st attempt. These were more to get used to the gear then to "warm-up". Deadlifts I did 135x5, 225x5, 315x1, 405x1, 495x1, 585x1, suit on 625-650x1, then attempts. I guess you could call this a warm-up of sorts, but for me it was more for just getting used to the weight.

When I did strongman I never warmed up. They didn't have lighter yokes to carry or lighter stones to warm up on. You just did it.

On a side note and unrelated, these boots would warm me up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dbEhBKGOtY

[Alawadhi]

Dude just warm up and know when to train and when to stop. I learned the hard way.

[lifesnotfair]

While the clip from "Zombieland" is pretty funny, the whole argument of being ready for real-life scenarios like being asked to move furniture, or having to fight someone, are really worthless. If it's UNavoidable, then yeah, we will never warm-up and just go directly into a fight, for instance.

But if we can minimize or reduce risk of injury, it is only smart to do so. A gazelle, furthermore, will never have a desk job and/or a lifestyle where it sits it's butt on a chair for a total of 13 hours a day. This, over the course of a decade (or two, or three, or five), wrecks havoc on the human body, and many modern humans adopt horrible postures for long periods of time, something that until a few generations ago was not that common.

I believe research backs this up fairly well, too, about muscles adapting to their "resting length" and if they are almost always shortened, they will adapt. Also modern human may be weak(ish) in some areas due to excessive sitting, etc. So jumping from being 8 hours in a chair with your feet tucked under the chair, to running an all-out 100m sprint, might not be the best idea for your hamstrings.

But then again, what do we know. Every elite athlete winning medals at the Olympics (and those not winning them also) is warming up before their sprints, their gymnastics routines, their cleans and jerks, and what not. Perhaps this folks are so dumb that they start warming up when a buddy tells them "can you help me move this beer case?". What a bunch of fools. They need to start watching Nat Geo and realize that in the animal kingdom warmups are not necessary. This is perfect logic right there. Why try and reduce risk of injury? "I'm as manly as a bear so, just like it, I wont warm-up." Instructive thread for sure.