2 Sets and 2 Reps As Your Warm-Up
The world wide web is considered to be a source, a compilation of everything about anything in the world. It is a place where people go when they need knowledge about certain things and this includes their journey towards fitness. About 85% of the information we gather from the internet are mostly the basic and fundamental skills that are used for beginners.
Also, I’ve noticed that some of the people that are giving out information are not stating clearly the specifics of an activity. There are also those people who are not really qualified in giving out information yet are still followed by millions of people leading to misinformation of many.
As someone who studied kinesiology, I have gathered information from my years at school that could help me understand and assess my physical as well as mental well-being. One of the things I’ve learned is that there are 3 types of warm ups which are the General, Specific, and Active Warm up and I will share to you the facts that I know.
First is the General warm up. It is mostly a slow aerobic activity that aims to increase our heart rate, perspiration and decrease viscosity of our joints. An example for this is jogging on the treadmill. Next is the Specific warm ups which mimic the activity you are about to perform, for instance, if a power lifter is performing a bench press they will imitate those movements with light loads such lifting just the barbell itself without any plates on the sides. The third one is Active or dynamic warm up is exercise that is similar to low to moderate intensity such as high knees, marches, jumping jacks, and butt kicks.
Let's take a look at why people choose to warm-up in strength training or power lifting before the main activity. Let's use the barbell back squat as an example. There was a study that was conducted on a group of trained athletes who performed 3 sets of 3 reps of 85% of their Repetition Max (RM) as their warm up. The other group was doing a treadmill for 10 minutes and the last group was doing a bike machine for 10 minutes.
In this study, it showed that the group of athletes who performed the 3 sets of 3 reps had the best outcome of the lift because of the Post Activation Potentiation (PAP). Post Activation Potentiation (PAP) is a strength conditioning exercise that precedes a more dynamic exercise or similar movement patterns that lead to an improved performance in their main activity.
This also recruits the right motor unit in the muscles that you are about to perform. The reason why the other two groups did not perform better as the first group is because they essentially just increase their body temperature and when you increase body temperature you are able to increase or speed up the procedure on the enzyme. When you increase muscle temperature and use the enzymes you become more efficient, it's not about your body temperature, it's your muscle temperature.
Another experiment that was conducted from that group was the no warm up method and there were slightly better results compared to groups that did warm up on the treadmill or specific warm up with low loads. The reason why they weren’t able to perform at their best is because of fatigue.
In my own experience in my class, we first applied the concept of activating the right muscle fibers warming up with 85% RM, but our professor made us do 2 sets of 2 reps 90% of our RM on Bench Press. Surprisingly I performed better up to 5 - 10% on my bench press. Also, the second experiment we did in class was the idea of no warm up at bench press and doing the load that we can lift for 8 - 12 RM. It gave us slightly better results than doing a warm up and we didn't get injured as many people would say. This idea of warming up may be true for beginners because they don't know their load on the bar, but for trained individuals this wasn't the case because they had been lifting for years and already know the right load for themselves.
I had been doing this method for 6 months now and alternated from doing a warm up of 2 sets of 2 reps or no warm up during my compound work out such as barbell back squat, bench press, or dead lifts. In my own experience, I have also loved the no warm up method because it saved me a tremendous amount of time and it was more productive.
With the information gathered from these studies, we are able to assess and analyze the best method that is appropriate for us when it comes to warming up before exercise. We can see what method is the most efficient way to distribute the energy we have resulting in maximum performance of the activity.
References:
Buttifant D, Hrysomallis C. Effect of various practical warm-up protocols on acute
lower-body power. J Strength Cond Res. 2015;29(3):656-660. doi:10.1519/JSC.0000000000000690