What's the Best Way to Warm Up for a Workout? | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | I was taught that one should do higher repetition movements with lighter weights in order to

00:00:07.800 | warm up.

00:00:08.800 | And then one of the things that did make a big positive difference for me in terms of

00:00:12.520 | strength and hypertrophy training was to do a moderate repetition warmup with a fairly

00:00:18.760 | lightweight, but then to actually keep the number of warmup repetitions fairly low and

00:00:25.120 | work progressively toward the first so-called work set.

00:00:29.560 | When you say three to five, that's three to five work sets, correct?

00:00:34.720 | Yep.

00:00:35.720 | Are you also going to tell me three to five warmups?

00:00:37.240 | No.

00:00:38.240 | Are you also going to tell me it has to be done between three and 5 p.m.?

00:00:42.360 | So in terms of-

00:00:43.360 | With three to five friends?

00:00:44.540 | In all seriousness, what does a good warmup look like?

00:00:48.240 | And I realize this will vary depending on how cool your training environment is, time

00:00:51.640 | of day, et cetera.

00:00:52.640 | But as a kind of umbrella for a good warmup, what should people do?

00:00:59.520 | Well, you've already sort of jumped the gun with my answer.

00:01:03.120 | It is honestly very dependent upon the person.

00:01:06.000 | So some folks respond very well to a minimum warmup.

00:01:08.800 | Others, I've had lots of actually professional fighters I've worked with where I actually

00:01:13.640 | have a major baseball player right now.

00:01:15.640 | He's one of the best pitchers in the game, probably the best.

00:01:19.160 | And the longer we warm up, the better his numbers get.

00:01:22.280 | We actually did a vertical jump test with him.

00:01:24.240 | He's going to kill me because he got so mad.

00:01:26.440 | I wanted to see how long it sort of took him to reach a peak vertical jump.

00:01:30.720 | And most times this takes people something like five to 10 sort of reps.

00:01:36.040 | And I said, take it up all the way to a maximum vertical jump.

00:01:39.760 | And then what I want you to do is continue jumping until you have three consecutive jumps

00:01:43.120 | or you're down lower than 90%.

00:01:45.800 | And so what we're trying to look at is sort of when is he going to break?

00:01:48.640 | Because in baseball, he's going to throw like 100 pitchers or so.

00:01:51.120 | And we're trying to figure out when is his peak velocity on his fastball going to drop

00:01:54.680 | and sort of base his conditioning on that.

00:01:56.760 | So it's a different style of conditioning.

00:01:57.960 | It's power endurance is really what it is.

00:02:00.880 | He called me in the middle of it.

00:02:02.280 | I'm like, oh, he done, whatever.

00:02:03.240 | And he's just like, no, like how many of these am I supposed to do?

00:02:06.080 | And I was like, what are you talking about?

00:02:07.120 | He's like, I'm on rep 130 or something.

00:02:09.560 | And I was like, what?

00:02:11.400 | And I'm like, what rep did you peak on?

00:02:12.560 | He peaked on rep 70, something like that.

00:02:14.920 | 69, I think, technically, because he's goofy.

00:02:18.440 | So he's a classic example I've worked in for many, many years.

00:02:21.280 | We have a ton of data on him, a ton of biological data,

00:02:24.280 | a ton of neuromuscular stuff, like all kinds of stuff.

00:02:27.160 | And it just, the more he warms up, an absurd amount of warmup,

00:02:31.040 | the better he gets.

00:02:32.080 | And the better he gets in power production

00:02:33.960 | and the better he gets in speed and velocity.

00:02:35.920 | So his warmup prior to games is, it's totally absurd.

00:02:39.760 | And just the more volume we throw at him, the better he does.

00:02:42.760 | I have other folks, you get past like two or three reps

00:02:46.000 | and fatigue starts to set in.

00:02:47.560 | And now you're actually like reducing power production.

00:02:49.480 | So there is a ton of variation that goes in that.

00:02:52.560 | I can give you some guidelines though.

00:02:54.560 | You need to differentiate if you're training

00:02:57.080 | for speed, power, strength, or hypertrophy.

00:02:59.240 | Here's why.

00:03:00.800 | If we understand a little bit

00:03:02.120 | about what's causing the adaptation,

00:03:03.920 | that's going to tell you what you need to do or avoid.

00:03:06.560 | For example, volume is the primary driver in hypertrophy.

00:03:11.440 | Intensity is the primary driver

00:03:15.000 | in speed, power, and strength.

00:03:17.240 | All right, what that means is,

00:03:18.800 | you need to preserve intensity for the first three,

00:03:21.000 | you need to preserve volume in the second one at most.

00:03:23.320 | So if your warmup is so extensive

00:03:26.240 | in the hypertrophy training,

00:03:27.560 | that it compromises your training volume because of fatigue,

00:03:30.200 | even if it compromises the last set of the last exercise,

00:03:33.800 | then you're actually probably walking yourself backwards

00:03:36.360 | by doing that extensive.

00:03:37.520 | You would have been better off

00:03:38.360 | starting your first working set slightly suboptimal, right?

00:03:42.440 | 'Cause it's not really,

00:03:43.280 | you're just trying to accrue volume at that point.

00:03:46.720 | Strength and power is the opposite.

00:03:49.320 | Until you're moving very, very fast or powerfully,

00:03:52.720 | you're not really causing the adaptation.

00:03:54.800 | So there's no point in starting your working set

00:03:56.600 | until you're really basically at 100%.

00:03:59.280 | So the warmup should be as long as it takes you to get

00:04:02.200 | to where your mobility is in the right spot,

00:04:04.240 | like your joints feel good, you feel fresh,

00:04:06.600 | you feel activated, and you really feel peak power.

00:04:09.600 | Anything before that is a warmup set.

00:04:11.920 | In the sport of Olympic weightlifting,

00:04:14.240 | a lot of times the coaches will measure barbell velocity.

00:04:17.520 | Travis Mash has done a fantastic job with this.

00:04:19.960 | He's got a lot of data

00:04:20.800 | on what's called velocity-based training.

00:04:23.040 | Brian Mann at Missouri and Miami, tons of work here.

00:04:26.440 | And generally those communities

00:04:28.240 | are not going to count any repetition as a working set

00:04:31.560 | until you exceed 70% of your one rep max.

00:04:35.500 | Where that's changed because of a lot of people

00:04:37.920 | doing the velocity-based stuff

00:04:38.880 | is now they're basing that simply on an achieved velocity.

00:04:42.280 | And so really the warmup is irrelevant.

00:04:44.360 | They don't even, it's sort of just like do whatever you want

00:04:46.360 | and we're gonna measure the barbell

00:04:47.360 | until you actually hit an outcome.

00:04:48.920 | And now you're at what a working set.

00:04:51.000 | So different ways to think about it,

00:04:53.760 | depending on what you're training for,

00:04:55.400 | that'll give you a little bit of a guideline.

00:04:56.700 | If you're training for anything past hypertrophy,

00:05:00.300 | then really, and especially even hypertrophy,

00:05:02.040 | it just comes down to, are you feeling ready to work?

00:05:07.040 | Are you cold?

00:05:08.240 | Are you moving through the correct positions?

00:05:10.140 | And if all those things are fine,

00:05:12.000 | I don't care if you start a little bit early

00:05:13.380 | and save some gas at the end of it,

00:05:15.080 | especially if you're a person like you

00:05:16.260 | who may be a bit more inclined to fatigue quickly

00:05:20.680 | relative to Trevor,

00:05:21.600 | who just has no response to fatigue whatsoever.

00:05:25.240 | - Is it useful to do more warmup

00:05:28.000 | at the beginning of a workout,

00:05:29.720 | say before the first exercise,

00:05:31.880 | and then once one has achieved

00:05:34.080 | both local and systemic warmup, in air quotes,

00:05:37.560 | then perhaps on the second or third exercise,

00:05:42.560 | fourth exercise, et cetera,

00:05:45.400 | one or maybe even zero warmups.

00:05:47.940 | - Yeah, fair point.

00:05:49.220 | We generally think about warmups in a couple of ways.

00:05:51.420 | This is a really actually,

00:05:52.260 | this is a very clever question.

00:05:54.780 | You wanna have some sort of general global warmup scheme.

00:05:58.660 | We tend to prefer dynamic warmups.

00:06:01.660 | So this is whole body movements

00:06:03.420 | rather than like sitting and stretching,

00:06:05.580 | static stretching, things like that.

00:06:07.020 | - So something that involves momentum.

00:06:09.060 | - Yeah, momentum or movement, right?

00:06:10.780 | So this is like,

00:06:11.740 | think about this in like old gym class.

00:06:15.600 | It's like your high knees and your butt kickers

00:06:17.840 | and just different things like that,

00:06:19.000 | where you're moving in different planes,

00:06:21.100 | you're moving joints through tons of range of motion,

00:06:23.000 | you're getting a lot of movement there.

00:06:24.840 | So you're getting the local warmup,

00:06:26.720 | you're also getting the total systemic activation,

00:06:29.920 | everything else is going on there.

00:06:30.960 | So that is what we consider to be a general warmup.

00:06:33.760 | Five minutes is a very sufficient number,

00:06:36.640 | perhaps 10 if you're a slow goer,

00:06:38.840 | achy and some things like that.

00:06:40.980 | And you really gotta get the ankle warmed up

00:06:43.180 | if you're doing lower body stuff,

00:06:44.380 | really make sure that that's moving correctly.

00:06:46.740 | The hips and knees will follow,

00:06:48.660 | upper body stuff really get the shoulder blades

00:06:51.580 | and the neck, like making sure you're going there

00:06:53.180 | and the elbows will follow after that.

00:06:55.220 | So five to seven minutes of a general warmup,

00:06:58.720 | a lot of the times like classic exercise science,

00:07:01.060 | it will even just put you on a bike,

00:07:02.960 | cycling for five minutes.

00:07:04.020 | I don't like that personally,

00:07:05.980 | dynamic movement is more preferred.

00:07:07.180 | If you really just move for five to seven minutes,

00:07:08.780 | you'll be fine there.

00:07:09.840 | Now, specificity within each movement.

00:07:12.440 | It's very important that your first exercise of the day

00:07:15.560 | is generally the thing you've prioritized.

00:07:18.040 | That's oftentimes the most important you're going to do.

00:07:21.060 | It oftentimes is also the most complex

00:07:24.800 | and the most moving parts.

00:07:27.040 | So it tends to be multi-joint,

00:07:28.740 | therefore you need to have movement,

00:07:32.020 | precision and skill dialed, right?

00:07:33.680 | You don't typically start your workouts off

00:07:35.920 | with the forearm curl, right?

00:07:37.680 | Like that's, you don't need a tremendous amount of warmup

00:07:40.100 | to get going on that.

00:07:41.220 | You're going to start off with medicine ball throws

00:07:43.380 | or a snatch or some agility work.

00:07:45.700 | You need to have the whole system going

00:07:47.300 | because multiple joints are moving,

00:07:48.660 | position matters, technique.

00:07:50.020 | There's just a lot of skill requirement, et cetera.

00:07:53.340 | So the individualized workout

00:07:56.460 | or the specific workout for the specific movement

00:07:58.900 | for that very first one,

00:08:00.880 | my general rule of thumb is like whatever it takes

00:08:03.900 | to move perfect in that first exercise.

00:08:06.940 | Past that, you don't necessarily need to do

00:08:09.360 | individualized warmups for your next movements

00:08:11.360 | unless it is a movement you're trying to learn

00:08:14.440 | or just even get a little bit better at.

00:08:16.440 | Like drop the load a little bit,

00:08:18.020 | work on some accruing some practice reps, fantastic.

00:08:21.840 | Or it's another dissimilar complex movement.

00:08:25.040 | So let's say your first exercise was a front squat

00:08:29.080 | and you got loaded for that

00:08:29.960 | and now you're going to move into a pull-up

00:08:31.400 | but your mechanics aren't the best there

00:08:32.720 | and so you really need to change

00:08:34.480 | and do some maybe more specific activation warmups

00:08:37.520 | for that or something else

00:08:38.760 | or it's running or something totally different.

00:08:40.800 | So yeah, you don't need to rewarm up

00:08:42.800 | for every single exercise as you go.

00:08:44.920 | Generally once you're good to go,

00:08:47.160 | the same muscles that you're going to use

00:08:48.560 | in the next exercise are warm, same joints,

00:08:51.560 | then you're good to go.

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What's the Best Way to Warm Up for a Workout? | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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