received an email from a former intern that sparked some thoughts on what really sets the training we do at the SPC apart from what most people do in the gym day in and day out.
Here is an excerpt from that email:
Subject- I warmed-up today – you should be proud
I actually warmed-up before my lift today and my cleans felt amazing – what a concept. I feel like without doing some dynamic warm up stuff I have been losing touch with balance and control outside of my lift movement patterns.
After reading this I thought…”well duh”. But I can’t really say that I have always been the best at prepping before a lift to ensure that I am going to get the best performance out of myself that day.
After doing hundreds of assessments and writing thousands of programs, patterns often become apparent. Everyone that includes a good warm up in their program typically is also more consistent at training and has less aches and pains. That doesn’t mean just jumping on a treadmill for five minutes to elevate body temperature and heart rate will all of a sudden turn you into the next Usain Bolt, but it will definitely help you improve your performance and maintain it.
After an assessment, you should have a pretty good idea as to what will get you primed to train. Our bodies don’t always show up to the gym ready to go hard. Sitting at school or a desk for 6 hours isn’t the best primer for jumping and squatting. First, we have to take steps in the right direction to get the brain to ramp up activity to the right tissues at the right time, and rehearse the movement patterns we are about to load. I can’t tell you how many times I have had someone come in that can’t touch their toes and their back hurts during a squat, but after 2 breathing drills they are good to go.
That’s the difference in the general population and performance training.
Most of the time a general program just provides a list of exercises to perform that day. 3 sets of 10 squats, 3 sets of 8 lunges, 4 sets of plank for 30sec, etc… This may work for a period of time, but there are usually some factors that start to change how the exercises start to feel:
· If you’ve gotten stronger, the weights you need to work up to are much more demanding on the body
· You have adapted to the exercises, which means that joints that once were mobile are now a little more stable
· You don’t really experience movement outside the ranges of motion prescribed by your program
· You had a pre-existing issue that now is glaring because it has been under load repeatedly in a faulty pattern
All these can be managed or avoided by a good warm up.
Take a look at one of our athlete’s programs to get an idea of how we start off each training session:
A lot of these exercises might not mean anything to you and they don’t have too. But what you should notice is that we start with some breathing/repositioning, move into mobility and stability work and then start to ramp up the heart rate in different planes of movement. The athlete above is a lacrosse/soccer player. She will progress into some conditioning work and finish with some heavier lifts. The warm up takes about 10min and now she is physically and mentally focused going into the more intense part of her training.
When looking at getting the most out of your training, the first 5 minutes could dictate whether it’s a “good lifting day” or one that now doesn’t feel so great.
TS Training Systems 