Performance Warm Up

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By the looks of the popularity of the foam rolling station and cardio area at any major commercial gym, it’s clear that people aren’t sure how to prepare for training properly.

Instead of wasting away your training time on unproductive and potentially performance-reducing warm ups, you can use a 4 stop process that will allow you to get the most out of your training. We call this a performance warm up. 

In the first video in this post, we look at the squat and hips. Each step in this warm up is replaceable a placeholder for any drill/exercise you prefer.

The sections below get into more depth on the ‘why’ for each step. Remember, it’s about the process not the particular drill.

Not all foam rolling is created equally, that’s for damn sure. And if you plan on actually seeing objective benefit in your performance in the gym while also mitigating the risk of training related injuries, you better choose the correct soft tissue technique for the goal at hand.

The acute trigger point technique is the most effective foam rolling method I’ve used for my athletes and clients to open up their mobility potential while also being able to more reliably transfer into the big movement patterns.

Instead of rolling across the entire muscle belly back and forth like a sloppy pizza dough roller, you’ll be strategically placing the foam roller in contact with active trigger points in your targeted area that you are concentrating your soft tissue work on. Identify these spots in the tissues by “going hunting” for the areas of the tissue that simply feel like crap. These are neuromuscular trigger points, which can be simply defined as areas with higher spontaneous electrical activity that causes that region to become tighter than the others adjacent.

Fight the urge to foam roll your entire body and waste away precious training time by overdoing the first phase of this warm up. Instead, prioritize the number one area that you can get the most benefit out of addressing with soft tissue work, and invest 1-2 minutes total with acute trigger point work on the ball or roller.

Remember, foam rolling isn’t the goal in itself, but rather a means to an end. Avoid becoming Gumby before training, but instead have the goal to elicit a positive response in pain-alleviation and mobility and move the hell on to more meaningful work.

Lifters and strength athletes cringe when they hear the word “stretching” in a dynamic warm up. But contrary to popular belief, there’s actually little to no evidence that supports the idea of stretching negatively impacting power, strength or performance in general. Old vampire research studies that have zero application in the real world are hard to kill. But if you want to get the most out of improving your movement patterns before loading them up heavy and training them hard, strategic bi-phasic positional stretching needs to be incorporated in your warm up routine.

We are not passively holding stretches for minutes at a time here, nor are we using sloppy compensation patterns to try to “feel” individual muscles stretching. We are placing our body into neutral and stabilized starting positions, maximizing the use of internal tension throughout the body to wire stability through multiple segments at once, THEN adding a slight oscillation to enhance the stretch of the targeted tissues.

The bi-phasic part of this method comes into play when following up 30-45 seconds of oscillating back and forth with a 15-30 second end range stretch that is controlled via muscular tension and optimal positions. That means that this stretching phase should take 1-3 minutes to complete.

Both soft tissue work and bi-phasic stretching have the goal of reducing neurological tone in tissues by tapping into the power of the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and recover) and allowing the human body to function as authentically as possible. That means we must be working on the same tissue in both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of this sequence for the best results.

Since starting to use this 6-phase system nearly 4-years ago, we now do NOT program any soft tissue work without stretching, vice versa. These two come as an integrated unit, as the synergy of results speaks for themselves.

The previous two phases are used to get ready for phases 3 and 4 of the warm up.

Think of soft tissue work and stretching as a step-by-step approach to get you to the point where you can execute the big foundational movement pattern of the day better than ever before.

They are important to get you to this point, but now is where your mind and muscle needs to take over and start priming these patterns for performance.

No program is complete without training the 6 foundational movement patterns (squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, carry) and placing an emphasis on building, maintaining and perfecting these over time. There’s no faking the fundamentals and basics. In terms of prioritizing what foundational pattern to practice here, it’s simple. Choose the pattern that you’ll be training as your big indicator movement of the day. If it’s squat day, then squat. Bench press day? Hit the push up. Simple, easy, effective.

But these big compound movement patterns, which are the foundation of human movement and function, need to be perfected over time. As any serious lifter knows, it takes continuous tweaking and re-mastery of the big lifts in order to continue to see benefits without racking up training related injuries in the process. So this phase allows us to step back, focus on the feel and quality of the foundational movement pattern at hand, and all without the apprehension or stress of actually having maximal loading on the bar.

It’s damn near impossible to achieve two world class results at once. That means trying to perfect your movement patterns cannot be simultaneously achieved during hard and heavy training. They need to be two separate entities. That’s why we use 2-3 sets of 3-5 slow, controlled and deliberate bodyweight reps to grease the groove of the foundational movement pattern in this phase while the focus is not generating a training effect, but rather in preparation.

This is the only phase where I’m ok with you spending a bit more time, as long as it’s utilized in focused intent on chase to perfect a movement pattern, and not time wasted going through the motions. Spend 2-3 minutes here with laser focus on quality.

After spending some thoughtful practice of your foundational movement pattern of the day, it’s time to cut the touchy-feely fluff and get back to being an explosive and powerful athlete with some central nervous system stimulation work. This phase is geared towards pulling yourself out of the parasympathetic hole that we’ve been in in order to help improve movement quality and tap into the potential of the CNS.

There are a few key ways to potentiate the CNS in order to optimize power and strength while improving training performances in the process. The first is maximal loading, and not quite the ideal fit for the warm up process. But the second, high velocity based movements, are the perfect fit for this pre-training preparation phase.

Explosive lower body drills like jumps and sprints, upper body drills like med-ball throws and slams, and total body coordinated drills like jacks are ideal fits for this phase as they can quickly generate a neural response in the pattern about to be trained while also being effective and efficient in their implementation.

Similar to the foundational movement pattern prescription from the previous phase, we are matching the type of CNS work with the big movement of the day. For squat-based movement days, pick a vertical jump for this phase. For a deadlift day, a horizontal jump or bound fits well. Bench press or back day? Med-ball presses or slams are ideal. You can also implement neural primer supersets by combining jacks with jumps or throws for the ultimate CNS priming response.

For CNS priming, we must ensure that we dial back the total volume of work being done in order to avoid pre-fatigue of the CNS and peaking too soon before you get to use what you’ve worked so hard for in this phase. Stick to 2-3 sets of 2-5 reps of any of these methods, and no more than 15 total plyometric based reps.