Is warming up absolutely necessary?

K

KungFuJoe

New Member
I'm done with the 5s and into the 7th week of my first HST cycle. For the last 2 workouts of the 5s, I would warm up (using principles somewhat simliar to in the FAQ) before starting my sets. I don't know if I wasn't resting enough or what but those last 2 workouts absolutely, positively kicked my ass..and they lasted almost 2 hours! But, my last workout (using same weight as my 5RM), I didn't warm up at all...instead going straight to the 5RM weight. The workout, while still pretty difficult, went by pretty smoothly and in a little over an hour.

Is warming up necessary to HST or is it just to avoid injury? Am I losing any possible size gains by not warming up? My deal is that i have just enough time in my shedule for an hour's worth of a workout. If my workouts continue to take 2 hours for the next 2 weeks, with the same level of ass kicking, I don't know if I'd be able to keep it up. I'm not trying to come across as a wuss...I know that it's a "workout", but I'm talking getting my ass kicked to the point where I'm dizzy and just ready to crash.

Anyways...I'm not too worried about injury because my joints are very strong and if the trade off for shaving off an hour in my workout time is a little added injury risk, it's a chance I'm willing to take. BUT, if it means that I will take a big hit on my gains, then I'll have to reconsider.
 
Warming up helps prevent injuries and, at least for me, I noticed when I did a better warm up I lifted better in my work sets. My warm up for deads goes like this:

bar 5x, 135x5, 225x2, 315x1, 405x1.

I used to go from 225x2 straight to 400+.

I would say, that if you can get more reps with your work sets, then yes, not warming up would be detrimental to size gains.

How many exercises are you doing per workout and how many work sets?
 
I think it depends on how heavy you lift. As you grow stronger, warming up becomes more important. When I first started out, I could get away with some bodyweight exercises to warmup and never had any injuries. Now that I'm a lot stronger than I was, more complete warmups not only seem to prevent injury, but it allows me to do better during working sets.
 
Most people over-warm (is that a word?) prior to engaging in strength training.  A generic dynamic warm-up is a good place to start, e.g. swing your arms back and forth several times before bench pressing.  This begins the warm-up but does not waste precious energy.  Then warm-up with a very light set of 10 reps, slow cadence, just to remind your brain of the movement pattern.  Rest a minute, then use the same weight but do 10 fast reps (explode), as this will excite the neuromuscular system.  Rest another minute, increase the weight more (still well shy of your training weight) and do 5-6 quick reps, even more excitation.  If need be, do a 1-rep weight acclimation set.  I.e., put a weight on the bar that is just shy of your training weight, do one rep, rerack, rest for a few minutes, and then begin your training sets.  Do this for the first exercise of the muscle group only.  Subsequent exercises for the same muscle group should not need warming up.
 
anything between 20 and 50 minutes works for me. I found that I have my best sessions after having given a 45 minute spinning class. Normally, I jump rope for 20, ride the bike for 10 and do push ups for 5 minutes. The older one gets the more important the warmup becomes.
 
I only do warm-ups for legs (squats), and my first back and chest exercises. Once I've done my work sets for those, I can pretty much be sure I'm as warmed up as I'm going to get. Sometimes I do a lighter set for shoulder presses because I've had a few shoulder problems over the years and I don't want to make anything worse.

I like what BIZ says and, in fact, I have been doing something a bit similar to that (slow reps, light weight for around 10 reps for 1st warm-up set). Haven't yet tried doing a faster, light set afterwards but I like the idea.
 
Joe

I am with BIZ here, warm up for the biggies at least, shoulders to me are most importnat so I take time to warm them up properly, squats and bench are the two main ones that I think need warming.

The risk of injury is just too great on the heavy weights, do one set high reps, one set just short of main weight at least then start up!

My opinion - you can ultimatelly do what you want (if the choice is no) much to your detriment I am afraid!
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I've been curious about warming up too. As a relative beginner, I lift very light weights (5RM on bench is 150 lbs). My warm up consists of about 100 jumping jacks, 10 -15 "thrusters" -- squat to the floor and then jump to the ceiling, 10 - 15 trunk twists, trunk bends, various toe touches, a series of arm circles, and unladen good mornings. Before benching, I do a few push ups as well.

On cardio days, I do deeper, static stretching. I have read that static stretching temporarily reduces muscle strength, and should not be done before lifting. That's why I stick to dynamic moves one lifting days.

From what a lot of you are posting, I feel pretty good about what I'm doing. As my max's increase, I'll prolly have to transition from the general warm up to the more specific type.

Good topic!
 
My warm up merely consists of:

25 push ups
10 pull up
25 knee bends

That seems to hit all my major muscles enough so that I can go right into my maxes for any given rep range. At least I think it does as I have never had a lifting related injury. However, I do think you would probably need a better warm up if you were going to maxes under 5 reps.

As for your two hour work outs Joe, your implication is that you warmed up for an hour. My workouts never, ever take longer than 40 minutes including warm up (about 3 minutes) and I like to keep them down to 30 minutes in total. For years I did 1 1/2 hour work outs, 5 days per week and never made any gains whatsoever. It wasn't until I came across Bryan's HST routines that I started to grow again. I probably "wasted" 2 decades of lifting mega-tons.
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I have to agree O&G.
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My workouts are running about 40 minutes right now which includes my warm ups.

I also have come to the realization that I lifted wrong for almost 20 years. Not that everything I did was wrong but I sure and heck didn't know why something worked and why progresses eventually halted. Just in a one and half cycles of HST I am back to where 20 years of banging away put me. You have to love that and I sure do feel enlightened. I am so happy I found this place it's not funny.
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I have also found that I need to warmup fairly extensively. Even doing that, I still find a have one nagging tweak just about every week. Just healed a shoulder tweak and now my left knee is tweaked a bit. It's all good though. Just small bumps in the road.

Keystone
 
My warm up consist on 10 mins light cardio and 8 reps for exercices ( of course with light weight )

I think it is really important to warm-up , but there is a happy medium to respect !

I quite agree with BIZ !

Interesting Topic !
 
Interesting topic - I always run to the gym as a general warm up to raise hear rate/body temperature etc, get the blood flowing basically.

I then usually will do a light warm up set for my first back, chest and leg exercises.

However, I think Dan might have come up with some stuff casting doubt on whether exercise specific warm ups actually help prevent injury or increase performance.

I've been a few times since and just gone straight into '5s' type weights and haven't noticed much of a difference. so for the time being jury's out for me.

Cheers

Rob
 
I'm doing 8 total exercises and am currently on my 5s...doing 3 sets of each.

For warm ups, I would normally do 5 reps of half the weight, then proceed to the full weight (3 sets). On some of the more compound exercises, I would do one set of 50%, one set of 75%, then 3 sets of the 100%.

But that just got to be too much....like I said earlier, I was spending almost 2 hours working out.

I think I'll bring it down to just doing one warm up set (50%) of the bigger exercises like bb row, bench, and shoulder press. I went through one full workout already with absolutely no warm up and I felt better and stronger than when I DID warm up.
 
i do the same warmup as OG except less

20 push ups
5 to 15 squats with the bar or a little weight

i don't do the pullups because my arms get burned out quickly

i also stretch a little before I leave for the gym to make sure my back and legs are loose

never had an injury
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i do the same warmup as OG except less

20 push ups
5 to 15 squats with the bar or a little weight

i don't do the pullups because my arms get burned out quickly

i also stretch a little before I leave for the gym to make sure my back and legs are loose

never had an injury
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I've always been a believer in having a good warmup and stretch routine before lifting. During this process, over 5 years of lifting, I have never had an injury or cramp!

My method is as follows:

1.) Walk and a light jog combo for 10mins on a treadmill
2.) 5mins of stretching

3.) Lift heavy!
 
I've always been a believer in having a good warmup and stretch routine before lifting. During this process, over 5 years of lifting, I have never had an injury or cramp!

My method is as follows:

1.) Walk and a light jog combo for 10mins on a treadmill
2.) 5mins of stretching

3.) Lift heavy!
 
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