I had a good talk with a friend of mine the other day on my drive home. My former training partner and roommate during grad school, we were both pretty darn strong, but couldn’t be more different. He was simple, I was complex. He liked repetition, I liked variety.
He asked me straight up, “Do you still take so damn long to warm up?”
I laughed. I told him that since I started working at Cressey Sports Performance, a place that popularized long dynamic warm-ups, I probably spend half the time I used to spend warming up.
Why do I no longer spend 30 minutes foam rolling, stretching and flopping around on the floor? Because I’ve learned what works, what doesn’t and what really matters.
So here’s a quick guide on how to warm up in 10 minutes or less, no matter what you’ve got in store for your training session.
1. FOAM ROLL WHAT MATTERS
Foam rolling is important, but you don’t have to do it head to toe.
Perhaps the most immediate benefit of foam rolling is bringing down the tone of overly tonic muscle (i.e. muscles that are “on” all the time). For many people, these include the lats, spinal erectors, adductors and calves.
By now, you probably know your trouble spots. Foam roll these first for 2-3 minutes and get the other stuff later.
2. BREATHE
Positional breathing has the power to temporarily free up range of motion in a fraction of the time that stretching can. The concept of proximal stability creating distal mobility rings true here. Get your ribcage and pelvis back into a good position and you’ll find your neck, shoulders and hips will often move more freely.
Pick two breathing drills that address regions of the body that you’ll use the most during your training session. This will usually include the thoracic spine and pelvis, and either the shoulders or hips depending on if you’re training upper or lower body.
Five breaths per exercise with a long inhale and long exhale should take about 2 minutes tops.
Here are my four favorites. The first two are the “catch-all” spine and pelvis drills, while the next two are more upper- and lower-body specific.
3. HIPS AND SHOULDERS
Now that we’ve created proximal stability with breathing, we can better address mobility at the primary moving joints of our body, the hips and shoulders. I like to address both areas regardless of whether it’s an upper- or lower-body session because they’re both involved to some capacity whether you’re squatting, bench pressing or just running around.
For the hips, get some sort of stretch for the posterior hip (i.e. yo booty) and the groin. Some people have tight hip flexors too, so give those a quick stretch. If I’m benching, I skip the first two and only hit my hip flexors to help me get into my arch.
For the shoulders, mobilize the thoracic spine into extension and/or flexion depending on your needs. This is where things can get hairy because I’ve assessed and trained plenty of clients who think they’re so “locked up” that they can’t get t-spine extension when in reality they’re hyperextended at rest and need to restore flexion.
If you’re a desk jockey with slouched shoulders, extension-based shoulder drills work best:
But if you’re an athlete or lifter who spends more time in extension, a flexion-based shoulder mobility drill may be more appropriate:
4. PRIME THE MOVEMENT PATTERN
With stability and mobility taken care of, now you want to prime the movement pattern you’ll be using during your training session. For me, most of my clients and most people reading this website, that means a squat, bench press or deadlift.
Choose a simple drill that mimics your main exercise and perform for 8-20 reps. Here are a few of my favorites for the squat, bench and deadlift, respectively:
5. FILL IN THE GAPS DURING REST BREAKS
The above should cover all your bases, but if you’re convinced you need more, you can perform other drills between warm-up sets of your main lift. For example, while warming up for the squat or deadlift, I’ll often have clients perform the above Kneeling Glute Mobilization or a low-level core activation drill such as a Core-Engaged Dead Bug:
And the old-school powerlifter in me loves to do Face Pulls between sets of benching to keep my shoulders warm. This isn’t terribly scientific but it gives me peace of mind.
WHAT’S IN YOUR WARM-UP?
All in all, you can do a thorough warm-up in under 10 minutes with a bit of foam rolling and 5-6 mobility drills. Is this all-encompassing? Nope, but it’ll get the job done for most people, especially those crunched for time. And less time spent warming up means more time actually lifting. I think we can all get on board with that.