What’s up team. Pulling into the end of week two and hoping all of you are feeling great. Today I want to chat briefly about warm-ups, stretches and roll outs.
I see a lot of people doing stretches before they start lifting. I can’t say enough how much I think this is a mistake. To start stretching cold muscles is always a mistake I believe. If you really want a good “stretch” on the muscles you will be working in a set, you might consider adding a front loaded set at about 25% the weight of your working set. This will fire up and activate the muscles you are about to work out without fatiguing them for your lift.
Rather than doing a bunch of stretches prior to your workout, I would suggest a warm up. My favorite warm up exercises are jumping jacks, high knees and butt kicks. Before your set, doing 45 seconds of each of these twice will get some blood moving around your body and that is a good thing.
Once you start your sets is where stretching is a good idea. The stretches should be in the muscles you are working. If you are doing bench presses do a good chest stretch. Here is a video with some solid chest stretches (grab a bit of pvc pipe to help you along)
For biceps or triceps stretches I recommend simply flexing. Same for calves by getting on tip toes. Yoga poses such as downward facing dog and snake pose are great to get a body stretch. The important part here is that once you are warmed up and you are engaging the muscles to get in your stretches in between sets to keep those muscles primed and fired up.
Finally, when you finish your workout, you should be foam rolling and doing some yoga. For Yoga poses that are good post workout you can check out this old WB Fitness post
As for foam rolling, here is the video I used to learn how to do it properly and it has worked very well for me. Do not skip these steps. Making sure you are properly warmed up, say stretched and primed through your workout and get a good stretch and foam roll after will help you grow and also help you avoid injuries.
Grind on!