 This week's podcast is a great example of where we've got a loose working title and no idea what we're going to talk about. So we're going to dive straight into it. We're going to roll with it because these little short conversations between Jack and I, they allow us to live, be a little bit more loose and goosey. We don't have to ask perfectly structured questions as we often do with guests. I have we can just a list here of 20 questions to ask about warmups that I've been procrastinating over for days and been formulating. I'm highly, highly prepared for this podcast. Him I am not. I'm just going to wax lyrical for a while, which is actually the same as most weeks. Anyway, so we are going to talk about why, why your warmup might not be working. Why your warmup is the problem and why warmups are often really bad or poorly. That is a combination of the working titles we've come up with before recording this week. And hopefully within that, give you some tangible takeaway things to A, consider in your warmups and then B, implement in your warmups so that they can be more effective, so that your body functions better during your session. You're going to have better session, better progress, recover better, be in less pain and be happier because you're making all that progress. Before we get into it, we just need to remind you, because you've probably heard it already because you listened last week, of course, that it's January, which means we have got one of the greatest offers on that we have all year is 25% off our annual memberships, which means if you want to come on a standard membership and there's nothing standard about our standard membership, why do we call it packed full? Because we've got amazing membership name for it. But for £99, 25% off, I mean, you get it for £74 and £25, I believe it is off the top of my head. You get a plethora, that's a word the jacket often gets wrong. It's a plethora, not O, of training programmes, including all the specific movements, like handstands, human flags. This is going back to my training announcement from the other week. You mean most of your handstands, human flags, your bain rate basics, yeah. The segue I was thinking that you might use, Tim, for the offer was, you know, our warmups are that good in the virtual classroom for our online programmes. That's specific and tailored for the session you're about to do, that we don't even call them warmups, they're called movement preparation. And all makes sense for the rest of the podcast, but it's not just about getting tissue temperature up. It's about being specific for what you're going to do and all of our programmes are specifically designed with that in mind. But then there's also the progressive overload and as out of their period eyes and everything that you're going to need to make the utmost progress with your calisthenics. Training, whether you are just looking for like an overall body weight training system that you can use at home or whether you have some of those iconic movements like human flags, muscle ups, handstands, frog to handstand, those types of things in your impossible box that you'd like to achieve in 2022, then all those available inside our online training programmes that members get access to. And as Timbo said, about 25% off, go and bag a deal now and join us for the whole of the year, because it's about being consistent over a long period of time. That's how you make progress. That's the magic bullet. Right, so let's dive into this, a little bit of a short conversation about why you're warmup, why it might not be working. There's some Ws, yeah, on a Wednesday in there. Right, sit back, enjoy us having a chat about warmups. Roll that jingle. Listen, players. You're listening to the movement, strength and play podcast by the School of Calisthenics. Here are your hosts, Tim and Jaco. I'm going to kick you off Jaco with one of the most important things that we need to bear in mind when we think about warmups or movement preparation, whatever else it is you want to call it, effectively the first thing that you do before you get into the main body of your workout, this kind of preparatory phase is exactly that. It is the first thing that you are going to do and therefore has going to have a significant impact on how it sets up the rest of the training session. So if we bodge the first part of the session and we do a very general, non-specific, kind of just half baked warmup, we can expect that we haven't really done what's required to prepare the body suitably for the demands that we are about to place on it. So it's really important that we consider a couple of things this week and one of them is content. Another one is intensity and another one is kind of like bridges those two things together, which is the specificity of what we are about to do and making sure that we are prepared for it. Now, if I had prepared more fully for this conversation, I would now insert a great analogy, but I need time to think about one. So I'll stop talking. You can talk and I will see if I can call it one. So I will now start talking. Now, something that potentially for me now, I'm on board obviously with everything you just said, but something that potentially even precedes the warmup being, have I made some level of analysis check in slash self-awareness and like, how is my body today? That then takes into the context of what am I actually like right now with this session that's about to go ahead in terms of like mood, in terms of like energy, in terms of like, what, like, how bad was my sleep last night? Just how is my well-being in terms of like, what I'm going to then actually do? And physically, where is my body at? And then I can start, I might have a specific warmup for the session that I'm about to do that's tailored for that, all those things, but then having also like, this is something that's changed massively for me individually of going, and this is where I feel like I'm finally getting to like a good place that is then taking that, like the specificity for the session, but then turning that context on to like, where am I at right now? And what does my body need right now to then be able to go and do those things? And even this is something that you've been very good at in the past that I have not been about is then I can make an assessment to even go, I might change the session that I'm going to do based on those things. Hopefully that's not necessarily needing to happen, but that is an option for me. And then the other thing I wanted to throw into the mix was like testing and retesting. That's the only way you find out to know whether other things you're doing in your movement, perhaps actually making any, are they actually beneficial for you as an individual? Have you got your analogy now? A little bit. It's not, it's not a great one. I agree with you entirely. The analogy is a little bit, the only thing I often I can just think of what things I like doing that have got a similar kind of story behind them. One of them will be cooking. So it's like, you've got to prepare the session. This is actually really bad analogy, but I've started. Roll with it. You don't just take a steak out of the fridge and put it straight on a fire. You've got to take it out. You've got to prepare ahead, thinking that actually the steak needs to come up to room temperature before you're going to go and put it on. Otherwise, it's just going to be basically cooking a cold piece of meat. And that's not a good thing. Let's not get stuck down. So I don't think it's a great one. What I do want to just kind of touch on before we get into takeaways around movement preparation in terms of how you can make it all that more specific to what you're about to do. It's just to highlight the point of what often happens in many people's training sessions. So let's say, for example, that you are in a group training environment, you turn up and your coach is going to take you through a warm-up. That warm-up is going to probably be, well, it is going to be very general. And probably, depending on the skills of the coach, it's either going to be just some general movements, which are going to serve the purpose of warming up, which means to basically get a heart rate going and to get the muscle temperature up a little bit, which are good things. But they're probably only going to be pattern specific for the workout ahead. So for example, if there's going to be some pressing movements in there, there's probably going to be some pressing in the warm-up. But where we often want to go with movement preparation concept is that we need to understand what the mechanics of that pressing pattern. So say, for example, you're going to come in this calisthenic session and you're going to do some handstand push-ups. Starting off with pipe push-ups is all very well, because it's a regression of where we're trying to get to in the main body of the session. But what about the shoulder mechanics at a more basic level? So have we got range of motion through the joint? If we've been sat in a car or at work, or we just generally got tight postural restrictions or areas where we struggle to get range of motion to overhead patterns, have we done something specifically to address that for you? Now, I'm going to get a little bit sort of, I don't want to overwhelm you and get you into thinking, oh, I don't even know where to start, but I'm going to highlight the point. So from a shoulder perspective, it could be pecs that are tight. It could be lats. It could be thoracic spine. It could be some issues around bicep triceps. There's lots of different things that could start to play an issue there. It could be mobility in terms of this tight tissue or overactive tissues. It could be stability in that your shoulders are unstable and therefore the shoulder is tight. So one thing which we want to be thinking about is, if I'm going to go and do a workout, what do I need on that given day? Have I got tight thoracic spine because my postural patterns in life are such that that means that over time I've just got that tight thoracic spine, back can't extend, shoulders struggle to get into an overhead position. If that's the case, then I would be sensible before I go into a workout which has got overhead pressing in there that I do something specific for myself rather than going along with the group warm-up, which is good in terms of it hits the patterns that we're going to hit, but it doesn't actually take into consideration how or the strategy of which I need to be able to create movement through those patterns. Can I say one thing for people might be listening to this and they're like, oh actually I just train at home on my own or I train with my mate and that's not in that group setting. But the principle and the concept is still there because you might, if you're just doing quite a generic generalize, you do the same type of warm-up all the time. It's just like engaging this concept of like, am I being specific to the session and am I being specific to myself, regardless of whether you train at home on your own or whether you train as part of a group. Yeah, definitely. So yeah, is that bringing that awareness piece of how do I need and that takes a little bit of effort, right? You can't, if you're not kind of invested in that understanding of, okay, what does my body telling me that I need today? That's a real kind of process to go on of a little bit of trial and error effectively and you need to kind of get your head in the movement. I think sometimes the issue is we can go into training sessions on autopilot and we're not necessarily that cognizant of what's happening in that workout and how we're feeling. So starting to kind of dial into that a little bit and that's where movement preparation can be a great feedback tool. So do something and then see how you feel after it. If you feel better and all of a sudden you've got better shoulder range of motion, then what you did was a positive thing and your brain liked it. So we can do more of that. But unless you're using this test retest kind of movement assessment, it's quite difficult to know whether you're actually ready. So we go in, we do five, six exercises, we go into the main body of the session, like is that actually, have we actually done something positive, which is going to affect the outcome? So some really easy kind of test retest things that I'll use all the time will be an overhead squat pattern. Hands overhead, unloaded, like no bars or anything. Do a squat pattern, total body assessment, how easy does that feel? If I do that before the warm-up and then after the warm-up, you could even do it after each exercise if you wanted to. If it feels better, looks better, more free, I've just got better control or making better shapes in those top-bottom positions, then I've done a good job, my warm-up's ready. That's from a movement perspective. And also then need to just lay on top of that, what am I going to do from an intensity perspective? Another one would be like an arm, like hands to wall. So stand with your back against the wall into kind of like a quarter squat position and bring your hands overhead. Can you get your hand through to touch the wall behind you? That's one of the assessments that we do at a workshop or a retest process. If you can get better range of motion or you've improved the way that you're getting into overhead position, it feels easier. Then your warm-up was successful, you've done something positive and beneficial for that range of motion. So that would be my starting point, like you start with movement. I've talked before and said this a lot around that movement is the cornerstone of performance. If you can move well, then everything else sets itself up. So part of our warm-up should be about restoring the quality of movement through the patterns which we're going to use in a warm-up, or in the main body of a session, sorry. So if it's a push session, upper body, whatever, if it's a squat session, we want to be thinking lower body or whatever it might be, think about doing things which are going to free up those patterns. And then we could start to think about activating a little bit more around the musculature, which we're going to use an intensity which we're going to want to start to train at. Yeah, and I think that's almost one of the, just picking on that last bit, you say that you, and using that example, you said, like how a pike push-up is a regression from say if someone was doing a handstand push-up as part of their session, and that the intensity compare, and this is for a comparison of like weight lifting or weight training compared to body weight training, where you might do a, whatever warm-up you do, and then you say you're going on to like doing bench press or squats, you're going to start with a lighter load, then you're just going to progressively build that load up to the target sets that you've got. With body weight training, it's as long as it can be more challenging to take that like progressive approach once you've finished the one we're going, like building through that session, because you're sort of like, rather than picking up like the slightly heavier dumbbells or putting a little bit more weight on the barbell, I've just got my whole body weight to do, and often I'll, in the past I'll have done this myself, and it's the same for people I'm working with them, is that we're almost like finished the movement preparation stuff, where I may have restored range of motion quite well, and I've maybe got a little bit of temperature, but then I'm going from like a, I don't know, let's say like a 30% intensity exercise to almost like 100% since I'm going, I'm going to try my frog to hand sign now, and it's like that we can still build up progressively with our body weight training, once that warm-up has finished, almost like the build up sets to your, to your sort of like peak work, is an extension of that warm-up, the warm-up put you, or the movement preparations we would call it, like addresses the specificity to the session, specificity to yourself, sets you up then to take that and gradually build through that intensity. You all, I think we've all probably been there and done it, felt the bad side of it, where you're like, you think you're feeling good, you've finished your thing, and then you're like, you try and start at too higher intensity in terms of like max one-hour effort. And that's where like, if you take the framework that we use of movement preparation, feeds into movement patterning, which goes then pre-seeds our strength-based work, whether that be specific or general. So the movement patterning part being this, typically like the skill acquisition sort of phase, but let's take a human flag, for example, we might do something to improve shoulder range of motion. We might do some stuff to start to try and open the thoracic spine to get us into that overhead position. And the movement patterning phase is then going to basically serve as, yes, some skill acquisition, but it also primes the system to put force down because we might go and do, for example, something like a stability ball human flag hold. So in that position, we're going to have to really cue kinetic chain integration. So we're getting the shoulder to stabilize the pelvis in this lateral sideline position, but we're also able to progressively start to play around with ramping force on as well. So we can start that push-pull pattern that we need in a human flag under sort of unstable conditions, but it's starting to cue a little bit around force production and integrating some stability and expression of that asymmetric position, which we're going to go and want to use when we get into our applied strength section, which is then going to be very specific movements. So that might look like, as Jaco was saying, in body weight context, because it's a bit different to a bench press or a squat, it could be that you go in and your applied strength exercise for that day is a vertical flag. So we're just going to try and push-pull in a flag position and take our feet off the ground ever so slightly. That is still going to be a maximum strength exercise of isometric contraction for, let's say, five seconds. It's hard out, right? So maximum voluntary contraction for five seconds is going to be pretty like red line for most people. So if we don't... What we've done in that movement preparation processes you've gone through is you've gone... What's the movement patterns that I'm going to try and execute today? How do I optimize myself to be able to deliver a good quality movement or performance in that movement pattern? I've then done some work where I'm starting to kind of cue the brain up for... This is a pattern that I want to do and I can start to load a little bit of intensity towards it, but nothing too crazy. So I'm warming up the patterns and starting to get the new activity going. And then I go into a stage where I'm going right now. Here's the main body of the series adaptation that I'm looking for of strength and it's high end, high kind of like effort. That's my kind of target total work. So we... I think that's just... There's an idea of thinking through what does your warm-up look like and how do you sequence your training sessions so that you actually arrive at the main part of the session where we need that strength adaptation or stimulus for that day. What have you done preceding that to make sure that you arrive there in a place where you are ready to kind of get as much benefit as you can from that 10, 15 minutes or whatever it might be that you're going to focus on those specific exercises and getting that success. And as Jaco mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, the performance progression week on week of being able to successfully do those exercises well. Like we all know what happens if you're going to walk in and do no warm-up and you're going to go straight under the bench press and try and go for a 1RM. Like it's not going to be that good. We need to build ourselves into it and the same thing with body weight training. But we can take really actionable steps right from our movement preparation to get better performance. And if we do that, we get better progression because we're going to get better adaptations. So we're going to move through. So it's not just the quality that five-second hold. It's what we did preceding that which is going to affect how quickly we then achieve our goals. No. Very, very... If you can get your head around these... What hopefully can seem like relatively simple principles. You're going to be able to change or massively improve the impact that your warm-up is then going to have and then you will start to see the real benefits in your training. And to try to attempt to summarise some of these like actual takeaway things would be like asking yourself some of these types of questions like and then put something into place do I have some way... So question one, do I have some way or some measurable action around assessing how am I currently today before I've even warmed up? And it might be that you've got some wearable tech like I watched it gives you some feedback on like how you slept or your heart rate variability or something to give you a bit of a marker or you're much more of a touchy-feely person you've got an awareness, give them yourself... I'm a 7 out of 10 today or whatever you want to do that but something to check in on yourself how are you... how are you doing right now before you warm up? Then something that you're able to test and retest to assess whether your warm-ups are and your movement preparation is helping you to improve the thing you're going to work on. So that test, retest being related to the session you're going to do. So if it's a handstand session and your arm's going to be going overhead you're doing like an overhead assessment. If it's like more of a muscle thing you need to go more into an rotation and extension of the shoulder like assessing for that. Do your preparation, reassess and then the final bit is like am I gradually building into my session once I've actually done my sufficient movement preparation or warm-up work? Have I summarized Timber? There's so much in there. Yeah, that's great. Now I think it's so... sometimes when I listen to myself back I'm like are we just... people are like I just want to get on with my workout guys and I'm like what you are. Yeah, that doesn't have to be a long period of time though. This is the thing. No. As this is actually a really good point as you get better at understanding yourself understanding what works for you and then understanding what your session needs that warm-up can be very short. My warm-ups my movement preparation used to be like far too long and the reason being because I didn't actually... I wasn't I wasn't effective enough in knowing what was actually working so therefore you just do everything and it takes too long that with what we're describing if your pinpoint with knowing what you need to do can be shorter rather than longer I would say. Yeah and I think you start to kind of go I just want to get on my session guys and this all sounds a bit corrective and that kind of thing but just to kind of contextualize it say you want to do some pistol squat work and you've got tight coughs there's no chance you can have a great session if you don't do something about the cough it can be as simple as that and if you by taking that 10 minutes don't see it as wasted time see it as optimizing the performance that you're going to get later on in the session those things are going to aggregate over time so we do we consistently commit to our warm-up to being specific for what we're about to do meaning we get better results you do that for six months you're going to be way further ahead than you would be if you come in and just kind of effectively just toss off the warm-up and just try and do a few things that are not non-specific and then just try and get into the body of the session because you're not going to get as good adaptation particularly in calisthenics like I think it's probably more important than a lot of areas because as Jaco said you're having to lift your whole body you're managing a large amount of mass it's not the same as going we're going to bench today so I don't know I feel a bit tired so I'll start at 60 rather than 70 like you're going into handstand push-ups you're starting at your body weight whether you like it or not not to as we're bringing things to a close so not to open up a bit of a rabbit hole but you'll you'll like this Timbo so maybe save maybe save the reply for another podcast but I think the number one thing that reduces my progression and this will be very similar for a lot of people is not being injured that I stopped training I haven't been injured for a long time that stops me training but it's the little niggles that just like a scratching there in the and you don't actually sort the amount of deal with them that it just like makes your session be a little bit crap and you feel a bit crap as you don't feel I really really is able to to push through that thing because that was niggling still a little bit but I sort of did a session and you basically just stay on this like plateau of just not really making any further because you're not addressing the things and it not not that it's the answer for all things but like having better more specific movement preparation for an effective warm-up will allow you to have less days like training like that more days of training where you like I did a session this morning and I was like that's the best I've done my pipe push-ups and it felt flipping brilliant and one of the one of the little tricks I'm doing is trick there are no magic bullets but what it's like I'm leaving leaving a little bit leaving leaving something for for the next day or leaving something for you there you go not killing it and not and then if anything is feeling not groggy not great sorry feeling a bit like off either leaving it or addressing it but anyway but I feel like you'd be on board with that yeah definitely I think you're dead right and it's like if I'm going to do an overhead pressing session now because of my shoulder history like there's no I will just go and do my corrective program that I know works for me so I'll go and do some stuff on my shoulder stability and my scapular movement because I know it's going to help and if you put it if you kind of listen to this and go still not you still not kind of sold this to me if you increase the structure integrity of your system so let's take the shoulders for example it's very callous and it's specific if you can improve the way that your shoulder is moving your brain will allow you to produce more force because it has more confidence in the structure integrity and it knows that it's not going to be unstable and if you're not getting pain you are going to be able to one put more force down so you're going to be able to get better strength adaptations and if you're not kind of like getting that kind of pinching or uncomfortable sensation in your shoulders or whatever it might be elbows the lot you can kind of insert whatever body part you want to then you're probably going to have the confidence to go through and complete those eight repetitions rather than stopping at six because you feel a bit weak and it's kind of uncomfortable like all of those things are the things I'm seeking to address in my warm-up and if I can't undo them in that warm-up and I don't do that test retest and I go after my warm-up I feel now like I can go and complete the targets repetitions that I've got for that session then I haven't done a good enough warm-up or as Jaco says I need to modify that session because my shoulders not in a good place that day and I probably shouldn't be pushing it that hard anyway that's not weakness it's not giving in it's just intelligently listening to your body so that you can actually do what you want to do and rather than having a compromise session on the upper body I might go do you know what I have trained my shoulders quite a lot the last four weeks they're a bit tired maybe I'll throw in a little bit more recovery work some more kind of like mobility things just to get them moving better later on this week so today I'm just going to switch my program and I might go lower body or I might do some core stuff or I might do some pulling work whatever it might be and go and have a really good session at that but my warm-up has still informed that decision about what I'm going to do and it just requires us to be a little bit sort of flexible and mindful about how we are kind of seeing that whole piece of physical exercise that we're going to do on any given day and if you're listening to this the biggest takeaway message is take your warm-ups seriously people if you are like oh what were some of those tests that Tim was talking about maybe I like to use those if you are like not sure about what even some of those more specific movement preparation things might be every single program for our online members has specific movement preparation and warm-ups as part of those programs the testing and retesting is in all within there and if you I know some of you listening will have like you've had a membership with us in the past but maybe you've not used it you know there's no contract to them so you know if you're on a monthly membership you can cancel them anytime but the annual membership obviously you get that for the year and some of you have used it and then you've stopped using it like actually yeah no one of the thing I might you know I won't get back on board and actually take this seriously do this properly and that starts with more warm-ups properly then get on board with that annual offer that we've got on right now 25% off your annual memberships whether you want a standard or VIP but that does make that standard less than 75 quid so it is a bargain for a full year of training check out the movement preparation parts for a starting point don't be that guy or girl that skips the skips that bit now straight straight to the good stuff don't skip that so many of us sat there going but this sounds like it's just a generic program that's written for everybody well you're right there are some exercises but we've given them as Jako said specific to the workouts that you're going to do but the thing to also remember is we are wanting to help you to understand and educate you so there are assessments in many of the classrooms you can go through you can kind of do a bit of a body weight set or a body movement assessment and you can also start to kind of understand as you use a different program is what the different tools are and some of them if you're going through this process with an open mind about how they apply to me you'll end up after a period of time of going these are the five or six things which I know I need to do based on what my body is telling me and that's where the education and the power comes from so yes there are prescribed exercises which are the same for everybody but they are specific to the training program your job is to work through those and go these ones I feel like they give me really good value and keeping that one that's the tool in my toolbox and I'm going to go and add to that over time and that's how Jako and I end up with doing five ten minutes of movement prep and being able to go into a decent session because you've kind of just got that that little arsenal of things which are going to work perfect sign off all right guys thank you for listening I hope that's giving you some food for thought at the beginning of the year tea sell for a great year ahead by making one small change and that being a bit more focused on what you're doing in your movement preparation warm-ups coordinate movement prep it sounds a little bit more sports and sexy sounds well perfection so yeah until next time keep exploring your physical potential with movement strength and play class dismiss