These Are The Best Warmup Exercises You Should Do Before A Workout
While you may be eager to jump right into your workout when you enter the gym, warmups before a workout are crucial for your performance, as well as lowering your risk of injury. You certainly wouldn’t want to end up with a debilitating injury because you didn’t put in 5-10 minutes of work before a workout. That is all it takes, just a few minutes before your workout to get the blood flowing. But, what are the best warmup exercises?
Our team at Generation Iron has broken down the best warmup exercises you can do to get yourself ready for a workout.
What are Warmups?
Warming up before a workout gets you loose by pumping blood into your muscles and lubricating your joints. Getting warmed up and loose can help you lift more weights while minimizing the chances of an injury. For most people, warming up consists of a couple of arm rotations and standing toe touches, and maybe playing around with a resistance band, but that may not always be enough to really get you ready for an intense workout, sometimes you need more than just a basic warmup.
Basic warm up exercises like arm rotations and toe touches are great if you do them first thing when you are waking up in the morning, but they aren’t going to do much for you if your workouts consist of deadlifts and T-bar rows. Your warmups should be adjusted as per your workouts.
The Best Warmup Exercises
Let’s dive into the best warmup exercises to get you prepared for your workout.
Pull-Ups
Pull-ups are one of the best warmup exercises that you can do before any upper body workout, as they loosen up the entire upper half. Performing pull-ups will pump blood into your chest, back, shoulders, and arms, and therefore will get you ready for your workout no matter what muscle group you are hitting that day. There is no fixed number of reps you need to complete in these three sets, and you also do not need to go all out because you don’t want to burn yourself out before the workout even gets started.
If you are comfortable performing pull-ups, then try to complete the 30-40 reps spread out through three sets, or three sets of 10-12. If you’re a beginner and can’t perform pull-ups, use an assisted pull-up machine if you have an access to it or use a spotter, as long as you get that blood pumping.
Supine Knee Cross
Your lower back is highly prone to injuries or even just plain muscle soreness, especially if you deadlift or squat heavy. Lower back issues can affect everything, as you use your lower back for more than just lifting. If you have a stiff back or are sore from a previous workout, you should put in a few minutes to loosen up your lower back. The supine knee cross helps in warming up your lower back, glutes, hams, and quads.
Lie down on a mat facing the roof. Stretch out your arms and keep your shoulders pinned to the floor. Bend your right knee, move it across your body and try touching the floor without lifting your right shoulder off the ground. Repeat it for the left leg. This is a great warm up to get you ready for your workout.
Surya Namaskar
Surya Namaskar is the ultimate full body warmup exercise. You can perform this exercise before any workout, whether you are targeting your upper or lower body, it does not matter. Surya Namaskar (meaning: sun salutation) is made famous by the Yoga gurus and it promotes a healthy body and mind, who doesn’t want that?
Surya Namaskar is a 12-step exercise which will get you ready for your workout. Performing this exercise will work every single muscle in your body. The 12-steps make one rep, perform 10 reps of Surya Namaskar without resting in between reps.
Prone Chest Opener
Most people warm up on the bench press on their chest day, or maybe they do a few flyes before they start hitting the heavy weights. The bench press doesn’t warm up your shoulder flexors like you want it to. This is where the prone chest opener comes in on our list of best warmup exercises. You should be performing the prone chest opener and a set of light rotator flexors exercises using one pound dumbbells on your chest and shoulder day.
For the prone chest opener, lie facedown with your arms outstretched while keeping the arms in line with your shoulders. Lift your left arm and shift your weight to the right side. Allow your left hip to come up as you raise your left leg and sweep it over the right leg to touch the floor.
Pro Tip: Arnold Schwarzenegger, a 7x Mr. Olympia winner, used to do pull ups before his chest day.
Tools to Help With Warm Ups
If these warm up exercises do not interest you, there are other tools that you can use to get yourself loose before an exercise. Let’s take a look.
- Resistance band– Helps to stretch out, can be a great assistance for shoulder warmups, stretching out the pecs, or the back muscles.
- Foam rollers– Can help to roll out the back, the lower back in particular, as well as the legs.
Importance of a Warmup
You may not think that warming up is all that important, but it truly is something that you should not skip out on. Injuries can happen no matter who you are, whether you are natural or enhanced, you can still succumb to injuries. Professional bodybuilders, powerlifters, and other strength athletes are struck by injury even at the higher levels.
A proper warm up helps to allow you to lift comfortably. It keeps you loose and ready to go, so you can hit high volume or high intensity, but overall just have a good workout.
Best Warmup Exercises Wrap Up
Overall, warming up is important to do no matter what muscle group you are hitting. It does not matter if you are benching, squatting, deadlifting, or doing other just basic machine or cable exercises, injury can happen and that is certainly something you do not want to do.
Do you agree with our list of good warm up exercises?
How long do your warmups last? What is your favorite warm up exercise? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
