Warming up
I’ll let you in on a little secret….
While I love working out and consider it to be one of the most important elements of my day, I often begin the day wanting to avoid it. Like most citizens of the twenty-first century, I was raised to accept a sedentary life. Our capitalist culture values productivity in all the ways that are the antithesis to physical mobility. Sitting around in chairs for hours due to school and work takes a large toll on our psyche. After a long day of toiling away at a desk job, it becomes an uphill battle with regards to finding motivation to workout.
Thoughts of avoiding physical activity linger until the mere seconds before I begin my workout; but that all changes the moment I kick into gear. This is in large part because of my warmups. I am telling my body that it’s going to be engaging in some strenuous endeavors, but not shocking it by going right into them. My warmups generally consist of low-impact and moderate intensity bodyweight and cardio movements. They are tailored to loosen and tune up all the parts of my body that I will be torturing (kidding…sort of!) later. I elevate these exercises by magnitude, so that when I end the circuit I am raring to go into the day’s strenuous workout. At this point, I am sure you’re eager to hear about what an actual warmup session typically entails.
Arm circles
I begin with arm circles, which is a simple, but very useful movement. It consists of standing with your arms straight out to the sides, essentially forming a T shape with the rest of your body. Then making circles by rotating your arms around your shoulders, all the while keeping them straight and your elbows locked with tension. I do ten repetitions in a forward motion, and then do ten in reverse (or perform the exercise for twenty seconds, switching directions after ten seconds have elapsed). Arm circles are a great rotator cuff stretch that helps strengthen all the muscles in your dynamic shoulder joint, as well as the biceps and triceps. It really helps to have these muscles ramped up, especially during upper body strength training days.
Air squats
Next is the air squat. As a warmup, I perform these in twenty to thirty reps, or as many repetitions as I can do in thirty seconds. The air squat is the ideal movement for building good structural integrity. In order to safely and effectively do anything that puts stress and tension on your body, you need to develop a good core. The core is the central part of your body, which includes your pelvis, lower back, hips and stomach (i.e. abs). Air squats also target your thighs, hamstrings, quadriceps and glutes, so you will be strengthening the entire lower half of your body as well. Your core and lower body are what will keep you steady, balanced and feeling sturdy while you’re doing exercises with any type of resistance, weights or bodyweight alike.
Doing air squats as a warmup prepares me for the more resistance laden squat-related exercises that are often part of my circuit training like dumbbell front squats and thrusters.
Lunges
Air squats are generally followed by lunges, which are another lower body focused movement. It works many of the parts of the body needed for good core stability, such as the hips, glutes, quads, hamstrings and calves. Lunges are also particularly beneficial to building a strong, firm buttocks. Before I started doing bodyweight exercises, my butt was flat. Now I am proud to say that your boy’s got back!
Like the warmup squats, pre-circuit routine lunges get the muscles geared up for more intense lunge varieties, such as lunge jump dumbbell rows.
Jumping jacks
The final warmup exercise in my repertoire is often the jumping jack. Sometimes I’ll throw in some jogging in place, or high knees, but the jumping jack is my favorite way of transitioning from warmup to workout. Perhaps that’s because jumping jacks are the first true calisthenic move I ever performed. There is a good reason why it is tried and true. Jumping jacks work the whole body, and get the heart rate pumping at a pace that will amp me up for the forthcoming workout session.
There are so many variations to this exercise that perhaps I’ll devote a future post to it. For my warmups, I usually just do the standard jumping jacks, although sometimes I’ll add a little light weight resistance in the form of the dumbbell jumping jack press. I do thirty or as many as possible in thirty seconds.
Now that I’ve written out a basic rundown about my warmup session, I think I’m motivated enough to stop procrastinating online and get started on my training for today!
If you have a particular warmup routine you enjoy and find effective, I’d love to hear about it as well.