Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best Way to Warm Up For Your Workouts

Episode Date: August 16, 2018

Like most everything related to health and fitness, there are quite a few opinions on warming up for your workouts. Some people say it’s vital. That skipping it not only impairs your workout performance but greatly increases the risk of injury. Others say it looks like a waste of time because it is. I mean, have you ever seen a lion “warm up” before it takes down a gazelle? Who’s right? Well, both are, to a degree. What many people do to warm up is rather pointless. You know, twenty minutes on the treadmill, followed by stretching, rubber banded twisting, hopping, and bending, and so forth. There are much more productive ways to use that time, and that’s what we’re going to talk about in this podcast. As you’ll soon see, a proper warm-up routine is an essential part of gaining muscle and strength safely and effectively. You can take heart, too, because it’s easier and faster than you probably think. A good warm-up is short and simple, and helps you have noticeably better workouts. So, let’s get to it. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, this is Mike Matthews from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics, and I apologize for my absence from YouTube for the last four to six weeks or so. I have a good excuse. It's because I have been basically working seven days a week, I don't know, 10 plus hours a day on creating new third editions of my flagship books for men and women, bigger, leaner, stronger, and thinner, leaner, stronger, because I wanted to get them done as quickly as possible. I want these new third editions out by December. And to do that, I had to basically push everything aside and work on just those projects obsessively,

but it's going well. I'm about 70% of the way through. I have to record audio books or starting on Monday. I think it's going to take me, I'm going to guess, two weeks to get the audio books done. And then from there, it's just a sprint to get all the final publish ready files done. The digital files, you know, the eBooks, the audio book files and the print files for the printer and so forth. Anyways, my point is for the rest of this month, I'm going to be pretty tied up recording the audio books and finishing the last little bits and pieces. But once all that's done, things will go back to normal and I'll go back to my normal posting schedule of, you know, I was doing three of these short videos, two or three of these short videos. I think it was actually two, two short videos a week and then three longer podcasts.

That's going to resume once I'm through this BLS TLS 3.0 project as I'm calling it. But that's not what this video is about. Of course, this video is about warming up. Let's talk about warming up for workouts. Is it necessary? And if so, what is the right way to do it? What is the wrong way to do it? And so forth. Now, some people say that you absolutely have to warm up, that it's vital. Other people say that it's completely unnecessary. Have you ever seen a lion warm up before it takes down the gazelle? Some people like to use that analogy. Who's right? Well, the long story short is as far as weightlifting goes, warming up properly is an important part of gaining muscle and strength, but not necessarily for the reasons that you might think. For example, while animal research shows that warmer muscles and tendons can handle more

force until they tear, we are not big rabbits, right? This is the rabbit research I'm referring to. And our bodies have a very complex system for managing how our muscles contract as they get loaded with more and more force. And it involves a lot more than just muscle temperature. And this is why human studies show that we don't really know whether warming muscle tissue up before loading it reduces the risk of injury. Some studies suggest that it does. Other studies suggest that it doesn't. And when you look at the data on the whole, the trend does seem to be more toward the former position that it does, but this is pretty insignificant when viewed on the whole. Now, that doesn't mean that warming up properly can't significantly

reduce your risk of injury though, because it can by helping you improve your technique. This is very important because if you've done any amount of heavy compound weightlifting, you know that as the weights get heavy and as your sets get hard, it's very easy for your form to start breaking down in little ways. We've all had our knees start to cave in on a heavy squat and our wrists go kind of crooked on a heavy bench press or overhead press and our low backs go kind of round on a heavy deadlift and we all know that those are the most common mistakes that people make that get them hurt. Now a proper warm-up routine can really help here because it allows you to groove in the correct movement patterns

on these big lifts. It's practice and the more you, the more that becomes your default way to squat, bench, overhead press, and deadlift. Research also shows that warming up correctly can improve your workout performance because your muscles are powered by a bunch of tiny chemical reactions that are sensitive to temperature. And research shows that warmer appears to be better. In other words, your muscles are just able to contract more effectively when they're warmer. And also warming up allows you to bring more blood flow into the muscles that you're going to be training, which means more oxygen and, of course, more energy. Okay, so what is the best way to warm up for your weightlifting and strength training workouts? I'm being specific there because if it's a cardio workout, you don't really have to warm up for it unless it's maybe some very high intensity thing

like all out sprints, in which case, yeah, it's probably smart to do, you know, a five or 10 minute walk or jog to get warmed up and then go and do your sprints. What about weightlifting though? What about strength training? Well, I alluded to it just a minute or two ago, and it is to warm up the muscles that you are going to be training. So doing cardio, for example, doesn't make sense if you're going to be squatting or deadlifting or bench pressing over head pressing. Yeah, it's going to raise your body temperature. And there is some research that shows that this might improve your performance slightly, but warming up the way that I'm about to tell you is also going to raise your body temperature so you're going to achieve that anyway so what you want to do then is a few warm-up sets of the

first exercise that you're going to be doing for a major muscle group in a workout so let's say you're gonna do a pull workout that calls for deadlift barbell row dumbbell row and pull-ups. So first, it makes sense, of course, to do the exercises in that order, starting with the most difficult, the deadlift, and ending with the least difficult, the pull-up. You wouldn't want to save your deadlifts for last in your workout, for example, because they require the most energy. They require the most focus. Do them first when you're fresh. So to warm up for this workout, then you are going to do a few warmup sets of the deadlift, which not only warms up all of your pull muscles and gets them ready for the workout,

it also allows you to practice your technique. And out of all the exercises you're going to do in the workout, of course, the deadlift is the most technical and requires the most practice to get it good at, especially when loads get heavy. So how should these warm-up sets work? Well, I like to do three warm-up sets before I do my hard sets for a major muscle group. The first one is about 50% of my hard set weight for about 10 reps, not 50% of one rep max, my hard set weight. So for example, in my last workout, if I pulled 405 for four, I'm going to put 205 or maybe 225 if I'm feeling lazy and I'm just bringing plates over on the bar and I'm going to do 10 reps. Then I'm going to rest about a minute and I'm

going to do another set with the same weight, 10 reps, a little bit faster, a little bit more explosive this time. And then I'm going to rest a minute or so, and I'm going to bump the weight up to about 70% of my hard set weight. And I'm going to do a set of four reps with that weight. So in the deadlift example that I'm giving, I'm going to put about 285 to 295 pounds on the bar and do a set of four. And then I'm going to rest two or three minutes and go into my first hard set. So I'll increase the weight up to, just sticking with the example, increase it up to 405 again. Let's say last week I got 444. So this week I'm hoping to get, let's say 554, maybe even 555. Now I used to do one additional warmup set, a fourth set of one rep with about 90% of my hard set weight. And I dropped it out a few months ago after reading some stuff

from Dr. Eric Helms and Greg Knuckles over at strongerbyscience.com. It was in their research review mass actually. And after reading that, I was like, eh, I don't think it's necessary to do this fourth set. Dropped it out and have noticed no difference in terms of performance or even how the lifts feel. So it works for me. It's a little bit shorter and a little bit less fatigue, obviously going into the hard set, even though a set of one with 90% doesn't impact you much. It's a little bit. It might be the difference of one extra rep in a hard set, for example. So that's it. That's the warmup routine. And again, you want to do that routine, those three warmup sets with the first exercise that you're going to do for a major muscle group in a workout.

In the example, we just went over, it was just a pull workout, right? So it's your back and your biceps are the major muscle groups involved. You warm up on the deadlift and then you don't need to warm up again. Obviously, like you go from the deadlift into the barbell row. You don't need to warm up on the barbell row. You are plenty warmed up. And then of course you need to warm up on the deadlift and then you don't need to warm up again, obviously. Like you go from the deadlift into the barbell row, you don't need to warm up on the barbell row. You are plenty warmed up. And then of course you need to warm up on the dumbbell row or the pull-ups. And if you were to do some biceps as well, you wouldn't need to warm up for bicep curls either because your biceps are going to be plenty warmed up from everything else that you did. However, let's say that you were doing an upper body workout that has you doing some pressing and pulling. So let's say you're going to do a bench press and a dumbbell press and a deadlift and a barbell row. You would warm up on

the bench press first, you would do your warmup sets, and then you would not need to warm up for your dumbbell pressing after because you're going to be warmed up. And then you would do your warmup sets on your deadlift because your pressing did not warm up your pull muscles. It doesn't really involve them much at all. I mean, a little bit, but not much. So you warm up on your deadlift, you do your hard sets. And then when you do your barbell row, you don't need to warm up for that because your pull muscles are ready to go. I also don't find it necessary to warm up my calves or my abs for any weighted calf or ab training because I'm usually doing higher rep ranges, lower weights, and very non-technical movements like a standing calf raise or a cable crunch. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and

found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the

show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. Oh, and before you leave, let me quickly tell you about one other product of mine that I think you might like specifically my fitness book for men, bigger, lean Leaner, Stronger. Now this book has sold over 500,000 copies in the last six years and helped thousands of guys build their best bodies ever, which is why it has over 3,300 reviews on amazon.com with a four and a half star average.

So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that are keeping you from achieving the lean, muscular, strong, and healthy body that you truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate male body, then you want to read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which you can find on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, I should also mention that you can get the audiobook 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend you do if you are not currently listening to audiobooks. I myself love them because they let me make the time that I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog and so forth, more valuable and productive.

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