The Motor Unit

When it comes to exercising, nothing is taken for granted more than warming up. Some of us just get into the strength training routine for the day directly (I did this when I didn’t know better), while others just do a 10-minute cardio session as a warm-up and some others miss out on other crucial components of warming up which increases their risk of injury.

Whichever bucket one might fall under, here’s a list of advantages to warming up as quoted directly from the 4th edition of Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning1 -

• Faster muscle contraction and relaxation of both agonist and antagonist muscles

• Improvements in the rate of force development and reaction time

• Improvements in muscle strength and power

• Lowered viscous resistance in muscles and joints

• Improved oxygen delivery due to the Bohr effect, whereby higher temperatures facilitate oxygen release from hemoglobin and myoglobin

• Increased blood flow to active muscles

• Enhanced metabolic reactions

• Increased psychological preparedness for performance

While all this is great to know, we need a protocol to implement practically. That’s where the RAMP protocol comes into the picture.

Raise your heart rate, body temperature, and blood flow. This can be elicited through a simple 5 to 10-minute simple cardio session like jogging or cycling or by doing a combination of skipping, high knees, butt kicks, and jumping jacks for a total of 5 to 10 minutes. This phase is all about low intensity - just enough to get you a bit sweaty and your heart pumping a little.

Activate & Mobilize your muscles and joints through dynamic stretching. The key here is to select movements that target the muscle groups likely to be used in that day’s exercise routine. For example, if I’m going to train the lower body, I could do side leg swings, side lunges, quad stretch to a deep lunge, or the world’s greatest stretch.

Potentiate or place gradually more demands on your muscles through exercises that simulate the movements in that day’s exercise routine. Taking the example of heavy barbell back squats, the simplest way to potentiate is through body weight squats or barbell squats with no weights. I could do resistance band pull-throughs, or light dumbbell deadlifts to simulate heavy deadlifts. One could take this a bit further and include plyometrics like squat/lunge jumps, kettlebell swings, and plyometric push-ups to prepare for the main routine.

The warm-up phase is meant to last up to 20 minutes and one could gradually transitioning the potentiation phase into the main lift for the day seamlessly considering the muscles involved with a 60 to 120 seconds break before the main lift.

I hope this post has shown why warm-ups are essential and how you could go about implementing them in your workout routine. If you liked what you’ve read so far and don’t want to miss out on future posts, click on this link to subscribe and get the posts delivered directly to your email.

Until next time!

Reference:

1. Haff, G. Gregory, Triplett, N. Travis, Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, 4th Edition, Human Kinetics.