Workout Warm Up SCREW UP! (Big Workout Mistake!)

Stop making mistakes and start making serious gains
We all know it’s a good idea to warm up before you workout, but how much is too much and what is the right amount of warmup to do before exercise? In this video I cover one of the biggest workout mistakes, overdoing your warmup. You would think that as a physical therapist that my big gripe with warm up routines is that they aren’t long enough. Not true. Most guys are spending way too many minutes doing something they think they should be doing when the opposite is actually a better prescription for success.
When your workout warmup goes too long you are cutting into your bodies limited energy resources for maximizing the intensity of your workout. Sure, enough must be done to elevate core body temperature, awaken the motor units responsible for “grooving” the movement pattern you’ll be using on the exercise, and to adequately lubricate and loosen up the joints involved. Extending your warm up beyond the point that each of these has been accomplished will only lead to a depletion of energy that could be better used towards your high exertion working sets.
In the example shown in this video, a person that would normally bench press 85 pound dumbbells might think that they should be performing warm up sets with 45, 55, 65, and 75 pounds. This ladder up effect is often what is prescribed in the bodybuilding magazines as the proper way to warm up your body for your workout. Not so. This is too much volume too close to your work set weight. Instead you want to significantly decrease the weight you use in the first two sets to allow the accomplishment of the latter two goals above. Once this occurs, drop to a weight 20 percent less than what you will be using for the work sets and take that a few reps shy of failure.
Next, jump above your normal working weight to neurologically turn on your capacity to lift more than will be handled in the work sets. Increase your weight 20 percent over what you will be using and perform 3-4 sub maximal effort reps. Now you are ready to perform your sets with your working weight without having cut too much into your energy you’re going to need for an intense effort in your workout.
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