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Dynamic 10 Minute warm up for Crossfit and powerlifting

Posted by Pascal Landshoeft

Jul 18, 2015 12:06:00 PM

Ten_minute_warm_up

 

 

Dynamic 10 minute warm up for crossfit and powerlifting

This warm up is the result of reading some books, try and error and just going for it. Hope this helps as it is around ten minutes and does not keep you from doing your actual session and you also have the opportunity do practice double unders. 

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The Science behind warming up

If you look into the science of warm ups  you first have to consider two different types of stretching, dynamic and static. Dynamic stretching is performed by doing the movement in one direction until discomfort occurs to than change direction to stretch the opposite side. Static stretching describes the kind of stretching most people think of when they hold a certain, uncomfortable, position to stretch the ligaments in muscle beyond the point of comfort for 5 seconds to half a minute.

You can read up on the science yourself in the,ink a provided, but firstly some limitations of scientific testing to keep in mind:

  1. Test groups usually are not big enough to have scientific relevance in terms of probe. Statistical relevance is reached with 2.500+ samples. most studies do not test such a huge amount of individuals, because would have to get an entire small town to do the same exercises over a certain period of time
  2. Test periods are usually not long enough to reflect the long term implications of stretching injury risks and health of athletes.
  3. Tests are not specific to your body and sport to necessarily have impact on you, the reader of the article as an individual.

With that being said you can read up yourself and I will give you the gist of things. Generally static stretching is said to inhibit performance when done before explosive exercises like jumping or sprinting which might come as a surprise to you. 

Dynamic stretching helps in performance in some instances, in some not, but is seldomly reported to have a negative impact on performance.

For the few long term studies around it seems that the athletes who did static stretching during the course of the test seem to be less prone to first time injuries than the ones who did no static stretching. Once you injured an area this positive effect subsides, which makes sense, because once something is broken it will stay a weaklink through your entire life. 

From reading these studies and the book "The first 20 minutes" I came to following conclusions for my personal training:

  1. Dynamic Stretching before each session
  2. One day of extended static training per week (usually my rest day)
  3. Get your heart rate up fast and short to get "in the zone"

The "in the zone" bit means for me that I want to sweat before I hit the bar for heavy lifting or for a crossfit WOD. For me this brings up focus and the adrenaline is already pumping. Ergo you will less likely execute sloppy and hit yourself with the bar, lose the bar, drop it on your head etc.

How long should you warm up ? 

A warm up becomes a work out when it takes up to much of your sessions time. I personally challenge myself to warm up not longer than 10 minutes to get myself pumped up and ready while not burining all my energy for the session to come. 

How should you warm up ?

There are two approaches ta a warm up. Either you warm up specifically for the task at hand by choosing exercises for this specific area of the body. This I would recommend when you have to do some very specific task like a one rep maximum test where you want everything to be very smooth or a run. 

The other option is to do a full body workout, which I prefer as you do not have to think about which exercises to do specifically and just do your warm up routine. 

With the general warm up I go top to bottom as shown in the video. Head, shoulders, arms, hip, feet and then some rope skipping to get the blood pumping. If you can not do double unders, do single unders or sprints instead.

Why should you warm up ?

It is completely up to you, however if I hurt myself it was in sessions where i rushed myself and skipped the workout to save time, be it the lack of focus or the actual shortfall on warm up time is up to you to decide. A warm up helps me to get the rust off the parts I have to activate and avoid overload. I personally say it is well worth the time.

 

Further reading

 

Topics: Lift stronger