Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / How to Warmup for Strength Training and Lift Heavy Safely | Ep 351

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How to Warmup for Strength Training and Lift Heavy Safely | Ep 351 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you're jumping straight from walking into the gym to loading plates on the bar, you're making a critical systems error that is robbing you of strength and inviting injury.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: Most lifters think warming up is about getting loose or breaking a sweat, but your body operates like a complex system and trying to run high-performance tasks before properly initializing is a recipe for malfunction.
• 0:25
  Philip Pape: Today, we're exposing why most warm-ups are either too long, too short or completely missing the point.
• 0:30
  Philip Pape: You'll discover the engineering principle that explains what happens when you start lifting cold, how to design a boot sequence that primes your nervous system for peak performance, and why the difference between muscle soreness and actual pain could save your training career.
• 0:46
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.
• 1:02
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, philip Pape, and today we're tackling something that happens before you even touch your first working set in the gym, but might be the most critical part of your entire training session.
• 1:16
  Philip Pape: Now most lifters approach warming up like it is a mystical ritual involving foam rollers, resistance bands, dynamic stretching.
• 1:24
  Philip Pape: You know enough to choreograph a dancer team and, trust me, I've been there.
• 1:28
  Philip Pape: I used to do CrossFit.
• 1:29
  Philip Pape: Others treat it like an annoying speed bump between walking into the gym and getting to the real work.
• 1:34
  Philip Pape: Let's just get this over with.
• 1:35
  Philip Pape: But I think both approaches are flawed because they misunderstand the purpose of the warmup and what it needs to accomplish, which is what we're talking about today.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: The truth is that your body, like we talk about all the time on the show, is a sophisticated system.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: I've learned from hard knocks, my own injuries and surgeries and other bumps and bruises along the way, that it requires purpose and intentionality.
• 1:58
  Philip Pape: And if we're to use an analogy of a computer, you need to initialize your operating system so that you can operate at peak performance.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: And if you skip the sequence or if you execute it in the wrong way, you're not just missing out on the gains, the reason that you're in the gym, but you're actually potentially holding your back and making it harder on your physiology, on your recovery.
• 2:22
  Philip Pape: Now, before we get into the specifics of building up your warmup routine, I do want to share something that can help you systematize this and be very intentional about how you do it.
• 2:32
  Philip Pape: Wits and Weights Physique University gives you those frameworks.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: We have a course called Lifting Lessons in our training templates course and it gives you chunks of practical recommendations on every one of these and it demos how to do different things, how to warm up, what to have in your gym bag, how to use a power rack, how to live safely, et cetera.
• 2:52
  Philip Pape: And that's how I've structured it, because I've learned from personal experience, from coaching people, from training, what really works for these different things and how people get stuck when they want to go and start lifting weights.
• 3:03
  Philip Pape: So if you're totally new to lifting, or if you've been lifting but you're not confident enough with some of these things, we can definitely help you there and we are relaunching at a much lower tier.
• 3:12
  Philip Pape: It's $27 a month, used to be $87 a month and if you join using my link in the show notes, I'm going to build you a custom nutrition plan at no extra cost.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: It is a combination of nutrition, training and lifestyle in there A lot of great courses, no pressure, a good community, and it's going to help you get where you want to go.
• 3:30
  Philip Pape: All right, let's talk about warming up and understanding what we're actually trying to solve here.
• 3:37
  Philip Pape: In systems engineering, we have something called the cold start problem.
• 3:40
  Philip Pape: When you power on a computer from a completely shut down state, it's cold, right, it doesn't immediately operate at its full capability.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: You've probably seen this with your own computer at home.
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: If it's been off and you turn it up, it takes a while to kind of crunch on.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: You know, not everything is ready to go.
• 3:57
  Philip Pape: There's just this lag there, right.
• 3:59
  Philip Pape: The system has to load the operating system, it has to initialize drivers, allocate memory, synchronize all the components.
• 4:06
  Philip Pape: And if you try to just jump into, like your video editor or some high performance application before it completes, you know it might crash, you might get an error, it might just really slow down until it's ready to go.
• 4:18
  Philip Pape: Computers get better and better at handling all of this stuff.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: But if we think of your body as working the same way, I think it's a good analogy for this process from the time you walk into the gym to the time you lift.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: So when you walk into the gym, especially guys and girls, ladies who've been sitting at a desk all day, raise your hand, okay, or you just rolled out of bed.
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: Because I train early in the morning, I do try to take some time to eat and read and kind of wake up mentally before I go to the gym.
• 4:48
  Philip Pape: But not all of you have that luxury and some of you just jump right into it.
• 4:50
  Philip Pape: Your musculoskeletal system and your nervous system, it's like they're powered down, it's like they have to have a cold start right.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: Your muscles are at a very low temperature, your joints don't have the synovial fluid circulating yet, your nervous system isn't yet primed for rapid force production, the kind of power that we put into place when we lift weights, and your motor patterns are a little bit sluggish and a little bit dormant.
• 5:16
  Philip Pape: And so if you load heavy weight onto this unrepaired system, it again is like the analogy I just said trying to launch a really demanding program on a computer.
• 5:26
  Philip Pape: That is still like trying to start up.
• 5:27
  Philip Pape: You're asking for poor performance at best and a crash at worst.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: And I just I like this analogy.
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: I nerd out on this stuff, if you don't just bear with me.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: So where most people screw it up, I'll say, is they either skip the warmup entirely.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: And I know some of you starting strength guys you're like, oh, I'll just jump right into the lift and warm up with the lift.
• 5:46
  Philip Pape: Okay, I get it, and that might be part of the solution and there's still a way to warm up properly doing it that way.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: But that's one approach.
• 5:53
  Philip Pape: Other extreme is I'm going to spend 20 or 30 minutes of my workout doing all the warmups, and this week I'm going to add in mobility, and then I'm going to add in breathing, and I'm going to add in dynamic stretching right, and it's like I have to do all this stuff and there's a nice happy medium, right?
• 6:09
  Philip Pape: We don't need to do all of this and we also don't need to skip everything.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: The fundamental principle here is that your warmup should be targeted for you, based on your needs and recoverability, and so I'm going to give you some options today.
• 6:23
  Philip Pape: Think of it as having three distinct phases and think about the phases that you need and how long they need to be.
• 6:31
  Philip Pape: Some of these phases may be minimal to non-existent, and others may be the most helpful thing that you personally need in the gym.
• 6:37
  Philip Pape: So phase one is the system power on.
• 6:41
  Philip Pape: We're gonna use the computer analogy.
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: This is the general warmup, and if you're like me, who lives in the Northeast, I train over over my garage where it's like 50 degrees in the winter.
• 6:51
  Philip Pape: It is cold, I'm cold, my muscles are cold, and this is like three to five minutes at most of some sort of low intensity movement.
• 7:01
  Philip Pape: Maybe you have a rower, maybe you have an assault bike like I do, maybe I have just walk around the gym.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: I don't want you to be running or sprinting at this point.
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: Just keep it easy, light and warm yourself up.
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: Just move.
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: The goal isn't to break a sweat or to exhaust yourself.
• 7:16
  Philip Pape: You're just increasing your core body temperature.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: You're getting your joints lubed up with a synovial fluid and if you're already warm, or if it's a warm day or you've been sweating, you know, then you could skip this.
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: You could skip it.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: I mean honestly, if you're, if it's 4 PM, you've been working all day, you've been moving around, it's a, it's a pleasant day.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: You probably don't even need to warm up.
• 7:38
  Philip Pape: You know.
• 7:38
  Philip Pape: Increase your body temperature, that's it.
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: So don't do the dynamic stretches or any of that stuff.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: Or you know you don't have to do jump ropes.
• 7:45
  Philip Pape: You don't have to do leg skips, any of that.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: You don't have to.
• 7:48
  Philip Pape: I mean, you could, obviously, but I'm not going to waste my power, my muscles or any of that on the warmup.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: I'm going to keep that for the lifting.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: So that's phase one.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: Phase two is like the hardware check right.
• 8:01
  Philip Pape: So now you've warmed up, now you got to make sure things are operating right.
• 8:05
  Philip Pape: This is where you prep your movement.
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: You do maybe some targeted stuff if needed, and what I mean by that is maybe some stretching or mobility work.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: If you have, for example, limitation most people, especially the younger you are and if you don't have a history of any issues, you don't need any stretching at all.
• 8:22
  Philip Pape: And some might argue that too much stretching could be a negative when you get under the bar right, because you kind of have almost an over-flexibility versus the kind of strong, slight springiness, stiffness if you will.
• 8:35
  Philip Pape: But what you're looking for here is whether everything is moving and feeling good.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: Can you get into that squat position?
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: Can you reach overhead?
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: Is your low back feeling good?
• 8:47
  Philip Pape: Nothing feels like it's going to spring out of place.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: For those of us with a history of shoulder injuries or knee issues or whatever, do you need to throw on your compression sleeves at this point?
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: Do you need to do stretches under the bar right?
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: If you're squatting?
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: This is a really good one.
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: It might mean grabbing the bar in the rack and just getting under and stretching into that squat position to warm up your shoulders.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: You know your thoracic rotation, just kind of making sure you've got that range of motion, Some wall slides.
• 9:19
  Philip Pape: If you're talking about overhead pressing, your shoulders are very stiff.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: I can go on and on about shoulder stretching myself with bands and stuff.
• 9:27
  Philip Pape: But again, you may not even need this.
• 9:28
  Philip Pape: It's not about activation drills or elaborate movement sequences or pre-exercise or anything like that.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: It's just is your hardware functioning for the patterns that you are now going to load?
• 9:41
  Philip Pape: That's all it is.
• 9:41
  Philip Pape: But I wanted to mention it because it's an important piece that I do think some people dismiss it as like, eh, nobody has to do that.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: No, some people do have to do that and I'm acknowledging that for you.
• 9:52
  Philip Pape: But it doesn't have to be a crazy amount, just a little bit of stretching for a few minutes per your needs.
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: And then the final phase, and this is the non-negotiable part.
• 10:01
  Philip Pape: So again, phases one and two may be partly optional or totally optional for you.
• 10:05
  Philip Pape: The final phase is the, I'll say, application-specific loading.
• 10:09
  Philip Pape: So if we're gonna take the computer analogy but it also that term applies to our body this is where you perform the movement that you're going to train.
• 10:16
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 10:17
  Philip Pape: You perform the movement you're going to train and you start light and you gradually increase the load until you reach your working weight, and you do that by starting with a higher number of reps at a very lightweight and then jumping up in reasonable increments higher weights, lower reps, taking a little bit of rest but not too much all the way until you're ready for the working sets.
• 10:41
  Philip Pape: And so what does that look like in practice?
• 10:43
  Philip Pape: Let's say let's go with a big weight Just to give you the full Monty.
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: Here You're going to deadlift 405 and that's your working set.
• 10:51
  Philip Pape: Okay, and maybe it's singles or doubles or triples, doesn't matter whatever, you're 405.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: So you're going to have a ramp up.
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: It's going to look something like this you might start with the empty barbell.
• 11:00
  Philip Pape: Now, granted, somebody lifting 405 may not start with the empty barbell, is probably going to jump right to 135.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: But hey, it doesn't hurt.
• 11:08
  Philip Pape: In fact, you can consider that part of phase two.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: That's like stretching into the movement right, start with the empty barbell, see how everything feels with your back, with your hip hinging, your knees, you know.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: Make sure the form is good.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: Another wrong with doing that it's going to take an extra minute or two.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: So you might start with the empty barbell for five or 10 reps.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: Do it once or twice, then you're going to take, you know, enough time to load 45s on the plate to warm up for 135.
• 11:31
  Philip Pape: And you might do that for five or eight, right?
• 11:33
  Philip Pape: I know starting strength has a model where it's like it's like five, five, three, two, one, but that's because they're going for fives.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: For you you might want to go with more reps at the lower weight and then you know, go eight, five, three, two, one, for example.
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: Just just an idea.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: So you're dead lifting one, 35 or eight.
• 11:51
  Philip Pape: Okay, add two more 45s, two, 25 for five.
• 11:54
  Philip Pape: Add two more 45s, three, 15 for three.
• 11:58
  Philip Pape: You notice I'm jumping, kind of it's not a tiny, it's not tiny jumps, it's it's reasonable jumps to kind of split the whole thing from empty bar to working weight into like five or six segments, right, so 315 for three.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: Then you add, maybe at that point you add the 25s, and do 365 for a double, and then you could jump to 405 right from there.
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: Some people want to have a little extra single snuck in there, so you might jump to 385 for a single and then you're 405, right, it's a little bit of an art, a little bit of a science.
• 12:29
  Philip Pape: The point is you got to feel good, you have to feel warmed up, and so this allows you to gauge your movement readiness as you get to that point, which also helps you understand whether the weight's going to feel good, how you're going to perform right.
• 12:43
  Philip Pape: It gives you a lot of aspects of self-regulation that people miss when they don't warm up properly or intentionally.
• 12:50
  Philip Pape: So notice what's happening here right.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: You're not just getting warm because that will warm you up by the way Like that alone will warm most people up.
• 12:56
  Philip Pape: You're rehearsing the movement pattern.
• 12:59
  Philip Pape: You're teaching your nervous system to coordinate all of the muscles involved and you're gradually loading the tissues to prepare them for heavier weight.
• 13:08
  Philip Pape: You're recruiting more and more muscle fibers.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: You're just gradually kind of massaging out that muscle system, if you will.
• 13:16
  Philip Pape: And so each ramp up set is both a warmup and a practice session, a skill development session, and so you treat them seriously.
• 13:23
  Philip Pape: You don't just rush through each warmup set.
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: You're thinking about your cues, your form, and because they're light, they allow you to screw up a little bit as you're getting over that morning.
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: Or you know that initial clumsiness that we all have when we first start our warmup in the gym, which is great, because then, by the time you hit real serious weights, you're going to be solid, and this approach is supported by every credible strength coach.
• 13:47
  Philip Pape: I know Eric Helms calls it movement-specific preparation.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: Greg Knuckles says that if you're going to do one thing, make it specific to what you're training.
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: Mark Ripito of Starting Strength says that you warm up with the movement you're about to train.
• 14:00
  Philip Pape: That's the warm-up.
• 14:01
  Philip Pape: So it kind of is consistent, but it doesn't preclude doing some of the other things we talked about ahead of time if needed.
• 14:09
  Philip Pape: Speaking of systemic approaches and intentionality, this is what we teach inside Physique University.
• 14:14
  Philip Pape: Again, just to accelerate the process for you and in case you feel like you're still going to be guessing when you go to the gym, we've got a course that walks you through these and, of course, support and accountability so you can post and say hey, how do I warm up for my squat today?
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: I'm doing this at this weight.
• 14:30
  Philip Pape: Is this what I should be doing?
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: Does this training program make sense?
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: You know, take out the guesswork, give you frameworks just 27 a month and I'm gonna throw in a custom nutrition plan today if you join using the special link in the show notes.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: If you go to the public website landing page, you get the same price, but you won't get the free plan.
• 14:49
  Philip Pape: So use my link in the show notes.
• 14:50
  Philip Pape: All right, let's address some of the biggest mistakes that I see with warmups, because you know it's good to know what not to do as well, cause everybody's thinking here who's watching?
• 15:00
  Philip Pape: Okay, that sounds great, but there are things that I've done for my warmup.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: Is it okay to do those?
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: Can I keep doing them?
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: Are they helpful?
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: And I think I think the biggest first mistake a lot of people have and it comes from like the bootcamp world, crossfit, f45 world is the everything warmup right, where you spend a lot of time with foam rolling, with dynamic stretches, with mobility on every single limb, maybe yoga positions activating muscles that are firing just fine on their own right.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: I got to activate my glute muscles.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: That's actually overloading yourself.
• 15:35
  Philip Pape: You're doing too much before, like you're loading too many background tasks before launching the main application, to go back to the computer analogy, right.
• 15:44
  Philip Pape: So that's the first mistake.
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: Mistake number two is the other extreme, the nothing warmup.
• 15:48
  Philip Pape: Go straight from the locker room to loading up, you know, maybe not the full working weight, but you go like half halfway there you do a warmup and then you load up the max on the bar, excuse me, right.
• 16:01
  Philip Pape: And that's again like trying to run a graphics intensive game right after you turn on your computer.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: Right, you got to wait for everything to load up first.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: Mistake number three is, I'll say, the generic warmup.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: It's like this is my warmup.
• 16:17
  Philip Pape: I do it all the time, right, it's the same routine, regardless of what you're training, and I would say that on a given day, based on what you're lifting, that the warmup is going to have to conform to get you ready for that.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: Yes, obviously, the lift itself will, by definition, do that for you.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: But even when you're like warming up joints and stuff, if I'm not doing any upper body, I'm not going to spend as much time loosening up my shoulder If I literally don't have to use my shoulder in almost any lift for the day.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: Like, why waste the time you don't really have to Understanding that there are systemic?
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: You know there are connections in the body that are systemic such that you sometimes do need to do that, but you've got to make a judgment call on that.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: So that's mistake number three.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: Mistake number four is another big one, and that is, I'll say, confusing warmups with therapy, right, like, in other words, like physical therapy, if you need 20 minutes of mobility work just to get into a squat position.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: I think that's more of a movement problem that has to be addressed separately.
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: That's just my opinion.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: Even me, the guy with shoulder issues it doesn't take me that long to get ready to use my shoulder in a workout, knowing that the lift I'm going to apply next is appropriate for what I'm dealing with.
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: If it's not appropriate, then you may feel like, geez, I need to do all of this stuff first to get into that position.
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: That is just my opinion.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: You may disagree, you may have a specific limitation, you're like no, I really do 15 minutes, need 15 minutes.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: I'm just sharing like general mistakes people have where there could be something else going on and I alluded to this before.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: But the warmup is a diagnostic tool.
• 17:52
  Philip Pape: It is giving you real-time feedback about how your body, your system, is functioning right now.
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: Today, if your usual warm-up weights like if you're going for that 405 deadlift but the warm-up at 315 just feels really, really heavy for some reason If your movement quality is off, maybe you're just low on energy.
• 18:14
  Philip Pape: You've been dieting, you didn't have enough sleep, the quality is off.
• 18:17
  Philip Pape: Low on energy, you've been dieting, you didn't have enough sleep, the quality is off.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: If you have pain rather than the normal soreness or stiffness, right, pain that wasn't there before, and you're like what is this?
• 18:23
  Philip Pape: Your body is talking to you right then, and there, like that's a really good thing to listen, to listen to what's going on.
• 18:30
  Philip Pape: I don't want you to make excuses, right, because sometimes it feels a little heavy and it's just because we're still warming up and then we go after the working weight and you know what we get the working weight.
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: It's fine, right?
• 18:39
  Philip Pape: I'm not saying that.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: I'm saying that if something's off, something's just off, it might tell you something.
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: And if you're in a dieting phase and you're using auto-regulated type programming like rep ranges, that may be the thing that's telling you.
• 18:53
  Philip Pape: This is what I need to hit today for the reps or for the weight or for the RP or RIR.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: Right, I would say that's more of an advanced kind of thing, but the warmup can help with that.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: And so one more thing comes to mind now that I think about it is the difference between soreness or delayed onset, muscle soreness, doms and pain, because I think some people confuse it too.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: Yes, I want you to warm up.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: If you have soreness, try warming up and seeing if you're good to go.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: But if it's an acute pain, a sharp pain, something that doesn't improve as you warm up, pain that gets worse as you're loading into the warmup, pains that's sharper, radiating pain that creates instability or you're compensating for because it just feels so weak, again it's telling you something and that is the point at which you're able to make a decision and do something about it.
• 19:42
  Philip Pape: Okay, and some of us who've dealt with injuries and surgeries, we get really good at understanding whether our body's ready for something on a given day.
• 19:51
  Philip Pape: And it may not be that you just don't train.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: My preference is you train around it or you train something different.
• 19:57
  Philip Pape: Right, if my back is like super sore and fatigued, even on a very light squat, I'm like well, you know, I remember in the past this has caused me to like have a flare up right.
• 20:08
  Philip Pape: This is back in the day when I had a herniated disc, I don't know.
• 20:10
  Philip Pape: So I don't get the pain, but it might tell me to hey, maybe I shouldn't be doing this today because it's right on the cusp.
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: I'm going to do a different.
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: Maybe a couple accessory lifts, like a leg press right and an RDL or something to work similar muscle groups.
• 20:26
  Philip Pape: So the warmup isn't just for prep, it's a really good diagnostic and then, when it reveals problems, you then have options right.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: Reducing the intensity, working around with different exercises yes, maybe skipping training I think that's the last resort.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: But the key here is to listen to the feedback that your body, your system provides and not just push through the warning signals.
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: And that's not just me giving you a disclaimer, that's like really good practical advice.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're trying to customize your warmup for different scenarios, I wanted to give you some options here, because I know what your next question is like.
• 20:59
  Philip Pape: Well, what if I work out in the morning?
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: Well, what if I do this?
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: So morning sessions usually require a little more warmup.
• 21:06
  Philip Pape: That's just the fact of it.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: Your nervous system is sluggish, your joints are stiffer, your core temperature is lower and you just may need to do a little bit extra, but not much, you know.
• 21:15
  Philip Pape: An extra couple minutes, right?
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: An extra ramp up set, something like that.
• 21:18
  Philip Pape: And, by the way, once you're warmed up and have done a lift similar muscle groups that are being used for subsequent exercises you may not need to be warm up nearly as much.
• 21:28
  Philip Pape: I always have one warm up set, you know, and subsequent lifts, unless it's super isolating, like a bicep curl, and even then I still might do a warmup set just to kind of prime things and then I can really hit it hard for the working set right.
• 21:42
  Philip Pape: But an extra minute or two if needed, great, go for it.
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: If you are older right over 30, over 40, over 50, you know it's not really an age thing so much as a personal recovery thing you might benefit from more conservative jumps between the warmup weights.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: Your tissues may need, you know, more gradual loading.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: Hold on, I'm having tech issues on my end.
• 22:05
  Philip Pape: Your tissues may need more gradual loading to reach the readiness versus when you were in your twenties, right, so you know the synovial fluid, the joints, the connective tissue.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: But again, don't use that as an excuse to go with a 20-minute warm-up.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: If you're later in the day but you've been sitting all day or you're stressed to the brim right, which many of us are from our work, your movement quality could be compromised from that.
• 22:29
  Philip Pape: It's very interesting because I work out in the morning almost always, but occasionally I'll have to work out in the afternoon to move things around and I just feel different.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: I actually don't feel as energized, I feel a little bit sluggish.
• 22:40
  Philip Pape: My body's not used to it.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: So simply being in a different context or different gym, different day of the week, different time, you really just have to think about.
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: Should my warmup be a little bit more intentional today?
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: Should I target anything more intentionally?
• 22:56
  Philip Pape: Right, but keep it specific to what you've identified not undoing everything and warming up for 30 minutes If you have a max effort day.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: If you're going for a PR, right.
• 23:06
  Philip Pape: The warmup for that kind of lift is really critical.
• 23:10
  Philip Pape: You want to be meticulous about the ramp up.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: You might want to take smaller jumps, but you don't want to over fatigue yourself for that single.
• 23:17
  Philip Pape: But you might want to have a few singles near the target weight, but not too close to the target weight.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: It's like you're priming your nervous system to perform but you're not overstressing it.
• 23:27
  Philip Pape: Definitely a little bit of art as well as science, but it is one of the most common questions I see, both in physique university and with my coach, andy Baker.
• 23:35
  Philip Pape: People ask like okay, how do I warm up to hit a PR?
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: And my simplest explanation for that is you're going to warm up like any other lift.
• 23:43
  Philip Pape: You might have an extra single or two.
• 23:45
  Philip Pape: Don't make the last single too close to your last PR, right, keep it like some distance away and then go for a small PR, like, don't do a single that's near your PR already, cause that might tax you out too much.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: Where you can't hit a PR, give some room, take the time, the three, the four, the five minutes break and then go for that single, that max at your, you know, five pound PR, 10 pound or two and a half pound PR, whatever it is, just to give yourself the best chance of actually getting it.
• 24:15
  Philip Pape: Now, if you miss it, you miss it.
• 24:17
  Philip Pape: If you, but you gave yourself a chance, if you hit it and you feel great, then maybe that's a warmup for an even higher PR.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: That's just one more single in the way, and now you can take another three, four or five minute break and then hit another PR, right.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: But if it feels tough or a grind, stay there, like, like, take the wind, take the PR.
• 24:36
  Philip Pape: That's the general philosophy for that.
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: So I mentioned I mentioned earlier at one point, how our body is systemic.
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: Right, things are connected and I didn't want to forget to mention this.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: But you're, when you're warming up, right, when you've got the movement patterns and you're priming your nervous system, there's a lot of communication going on.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: Right, the muscles are an endocrine organ.
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: That means hormones and signals involved, chemical signals, and so when you are ramping up those warmups you're already starting to get one of the benefits that I've talked about before about lifting, which is muscles that release signaling molecules called myokines and they help coordinate this response throughout your body.
• 25:17
  Philip Pape: It is chemical messengers that response throughout your body.
• 25:18
  Philip Pape: It is chemical messengers that are telling your body get ready for what's about to come.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: Because you're already kind of doing it right.
• 25:24
  Philip Pape: You're warming up, doing those patterns, but you're doing them light.
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: So it's nice because what you can do is now prime your whole system to increase your blood flow, to increase the firing of your nervous system, to tell your brain like we're ready to go and get focused here and like dial in that motor control, that mind muscle connection.
• 25:42
  Philip Pape: So the warmup prepares your muscles and joints and whole body communication to optimize your performance when you're ready to go at it.
• 25:49
  Philip Pape: So that's also why movement, specific warmups are so much more effective than just a general warmup.
• 25:55
  Philip Pape: And then just jumping into the lift is to activate those neural pathways right, and the signal cascades all of that.
• 26:04
  Philip Pape: So we just talked about all right.
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: So bottom line here, I think I covered everything I wanted to regarding warmups.
• 26:10
  Philip Pape: Basically, the warmup is an important thing.
• 26:13
  Philip Pape: It's not just increasing your temperature to getting loose, right, it's getting ready and getting feedback and diagnostic.
• 26:20
  Philip Pape: It's not breaking a sweat, it's, you know, booting up that whole system so that you can hit it hard with the lift and do it safely and avoid injury.
• 26:30
  Philip Pape: And the warmup should be individualized, just like your training program.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: It should be just like your goals.
• 26:37
  Philip Pape: It it should be just like your goals.
• 26:38
  Philip Pape: It should be intelligent, like the approach you take with everything else in the gym.
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: It is part of your training program, that's it.
• 26:45
  Philip Pape: Whether it has to be pre-programmed for you, that's up to you and how much precision you want there.
• 26:50
  Philip Pape: Some coaches will do that.
• 26:51
  Philip Pape: Some people like to pre log what their warmup is going to look like.
• 26:56
  Philip Pape: I don't think that's a bad idea when you're getting started, just to kind of take the thinking out of it when you get into the gym.
• 27:01
  Philip Pape: And they're not a waste of time at all, as long as you don't waste time, right, they're not a waste of time unless you waste time.
• 27:09
  Philip Pape: Unless you waste time is what I think I said.
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: Right, it's, it's intentional and it gives you valuable information about how you are functioning and then you can pay attention to it and then adjust.
• 27:19
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 27:20
  Philip Pape: Then you can go after PRs, then you can have healthy joints, then you can have safe lifting, then you're gonna feel confident, then you're gonna get the gains, and all because you took a few minutes to do this the right way.
• 27:30
  Philip Pape: All right, if you enjoyed this episode, I wanted to mention episode 234, which was from a while ago.
• 27:41
  Philip Pape: It's called Never Fall Off Track Again with your Fitness or Fat Loss.
• 27:42
  Philip Pape: It's about risk management principles, because I think warming up is a really solid risk management strategy, and that episode talked even more about risk management for everything that we do.
• 27:53
  Philip Pape: So it's episode 234.
• 27:55
  Philip Pape: I'll include the link in the show notes.
• 27:56
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember, in lifting, proper initialization prevents system failures and malfunctions.
• 28:06
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape and you've been listening to Wits and Weights.
• 28:09
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time.