Cardio Warm Ups Suck!!

I’ll admit it.

Back in the mid 2000’s when I started in the personal training game, all my programs started with either of these:

5mins Treadmill

5mins Exercise Bike

5mins Cross Trainer

Sadly many people’s programs, and probably yours, still use this warm up protocol but why?

Does the treadmill warm up your bench pressing muscles? 

Does the bike warm up your bicep curling muscles? 

Not really, not even close.

A correctly programmed warm up will be specific, or near specific, to the session about to be completed.

In the studio we take the time at the start of a session to gradually increase body temperature, relax overactive muscles, activate inhibited muscles, improve joint mobility while moving from ground to standing based exercises and then we finish that off with a 2 – 3 minute burst of cardio to get a spike in heart rate.

This ensures that most, if not all, of the body has gone through some sort of range of motion before hitting any working sets.

Often we’ll also program the first exercise to be progressive in weight until a top set is reached, so the warm up is made even more specific to the focus lift of the day.

The warm up should also include any rehab or corrective exercise issues that need to be addressed, which will be highly individual.

That being said below is a video of some stability / mobility exercises that you can include in your warm up to make it more effective: