Most gym goers could cut their gym time in half if they got rid of all the extra “warm up” sets before each exercise.

When you hit the gym, do you head for the treadmill or bike for 15 or 20 minutes to warm up? Are you warming up, then stretching for 10 minutes to get “warm and loose”?

Stop! It's a silly waste of time. Even worse, it can actually hinder you're progress!

Far too many times I see this scenario in the gym- the long warm up, followed by the long unnecessary stretch session, followed up with 5 or 6 sets of really light weight on the first exercise to “warm up the area”. Enormous waste of time.

“Yeah, but I'll get injured if I don't warm up and stretch before the workout”

No you wont. Studies have shown that stretching does not decrease the rate of injury. In fact, thoroughly stretching before a set will actually cause a decrease in the amount of force you can generate, resulting in less weight being used, and less stimulus for your body to respond to.

Definitely not what we want.

As for warming up, a quick, thorough warm up is beneficial to performance and should be handled properly. 20 minutes on the cardio equipment plus a bunch of warm up sets on the first exercise is nothing but an energy drain. I've written about the proper way to warm up here.

The first sets of an exercise are to acclimate the body to the weight. Acclimation sets are not grabbing the bar, cranking out 12 quick reps, adding a few pounds, cranking out another bunch of reps.

You want to acclimate the body. On the first warm up set, use a moderate weight, and perform 8 reps slowly. On the second set, increase the weight to about 75% of your top weight for the workout, and again, perform 6 slow reps. At this point you should be ready for action.

Let me add one more huge point here...

Once you're warm... you're warm!

Let's say you're doing a chest workout and you begin with bench press. If you're going to do incline press or decline press, or dumbbell press or whatever after, you don't need to warm up the chest again! The muscles and tissues of the area are already warm.

If you're working your back and start with barbell rows, there's no reason to warm up again before doing pull downs or weighted pull ups or (insert your exercise here).

In fact, you don't need to warm up the secondary muscles either; lets say you're going to hit biceps after back. There's absolutely no reason to warm the biceps up with 3 or 4 sets of light curls before you get down to business, because they're warm too!

If you're working on a totally different body part, simply perform 1 acclimation set. This is all that's needed.

With all the extra time you have left over from cutting out the unnecessary sets, you can spend more time with family, work on a new project, and read our Black Book of Secrets- everything you need to know to build a lean, healthy, energetic body, quickly. Much better options to spend your time!

Labels: cardio equipment, healthy, lean, stretching, treadmill, warm up