[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, it's Jordan from Barbell Medicine. [SPEAKER_01]: Now this episode preview is from exclusive content that regularly goes out to our Barbell Medicine Plus subscribers. [SPEAKER_01]: In addition to exclusive content, Barbell Medicine Plus subscribers get early access to episodes and products, at free listening, discounts on products and services, and the ability to ask Dr. Barakie night questions all for about the cost of a cup of coffee each month.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host, Dr. Jordan Faganbaum, and this is our eleventh episode of the Barbell Medicine Plus. [SPEAKER_01]: Ask us anything. [SPEAKER_01]: I have the second most handsome doctor in North America on the other end of the line. [SPEAKER_01]: It's Dr. Austin Baraki. [SPEAKER_01]: What's going on man? [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I'm here. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm feeling all right. [SPEAKER_00]: Things are going okay, training, looking up. [SPEAKER_00]: So no complaints today.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you guys aren't watching this on video, you can't see this, but I need to appreciate that Dr. Barack is letting the top of his hair grow out a little bit longer. [SPEAKER_01]: He's got a little curl coming on the side and nice, not intentional, but sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: fashionable nice we have a bunch of questions thank you guys so much for submitting them if we didn't get to your question this time because some of the questions come in like a day or two before we actually record this yeah and I want to make sure I get to them so I've added them to the next one but make sure to get your next questions in ideally before like the tenth or the eleven of September and then that'll be on the next addition of the ask us anything
[SPEAKER_01]: A few announcements. [SPEAKER_01]: We did just release the second generation low fatigue template. [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to talk about that more in this particular episode. [SPEAKER_01]: But if, you know, you hadn't seen the free extended sample, we put up for the Barbell Medicine Plus subscribers. [SPEAKER_01]: If you hadn't heard, well, you get a discount on it too because your Barbell Medicine Plus member. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk about all the specifics of the new addition in this particular episode. [SPEAKER_01]: Also coming up about a month from now. [SPEAKER_01]: will be in San Antonio, Texas for a live in person seminar at one of our new coaches, Sal, his gym in San Antonio. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you want to learn what we know about health, fitness, performance, et cetera, be a great opportunity for you to come and hang out.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to do some stuff where we train with the folks on Friday before the seminar. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think we're having dinner together Saturday night. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not just like, hey, come listen to us talk. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, come, come hang out. [SPEAKER_01]: And if you're a supercast member, you also get a seminar discount.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're having issues accessing any of the additional perks, make sure you email us support at barbamedicine.com. [SPEAKER_01]: We can we can help you out, but hope to see you there. [SPEAKER_01]: All right, let's get it cracking here on the eleventh episode of the barbell medicine plus ask us anything first question. [SPEAKER_01]: So this user asks, I apologize as I am sure there's probably been asked and answered several times over the years.
[SPEAKER_01]: My current method of warm up is typically three or four sets with an empty bar and then I add weight usually starting with the twenty five pound plates on lifts like the squat and the deadlift. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm wondering if I'm spending too much time on warmups and making my work sets lower than their potential because of accumulated fatigue.
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, on deadlifts I go empty bar, ninety-five pounds, one thirty-five, one eighty-five, two twenty-five, two seventy-five, always using those twenty-five pound plates in between full forty-five pound plates. [SPEAKER_01]: I recently tried doing my deadlifts, starting at one thirty five after the empty bar, and then doing full plate jumps and was able to get to a higher working set than I had previously been able to achieve.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was wondering if I should try the same thing with my squad and other lifts making bigger plate jumps. [SPEAKER_01]: What do? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, good question. [SPEAKER_01]: I actually don't know that we've tackled this in some sort of like systematic way.
[SPEAKER_01]: We talk about how to warm up, but mostly that's around like [SPEAKER_01]: Look, if you want to do a, quote, general warm up where you're like stretching or doing other like things non-specific to what you're going about to do. [SPEAKER_01]: That's generally not how we would advise people to spend their time, mostly because time is such a big, it's such a precious commodity, what it comes to not only just life, but certainly training, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we've, that's been the focus of most of our discussion, but as far as like how many warmups that should you have or what's the purpose of a warmup? [SPEAKER_01]: Is it actually useful? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that we've tackled that in a systematic way. [SPEAKER_01]: Can you remember if we've done that? [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's been a long time since we've talked about warming up at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the last one that comes to mind is when we made a video of you and I both warming up at the Jim and Chicago when we were there to teach us seminar several years back. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: It's about right. [SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's talk about this maybe from a coming up the central paradigm like what is the point of a warm up anyway and that might guide sort of [SPEAKER_01]: thoughts and subsequent like what do you do for warm up. [SPEAKER_01]: So the goal of a warm up is to improve performance in the subsequent task or in this case, a workout in order to maximize the returns you're getting from what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So theoretically a good warm up would allow an individual to complete a greater training load. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's not just weight on the bar, but also like more volume, for example, more total training load, and ideally less injury risk. [SPEAKER_01]: Those are like the two major kind of outcomes you'd be looking at here from a single session. [SPEAKER_01]: And then over a series of sessions, you'd like, well, look, if I do this particular warmup, I get better hypertrophy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get better strength gain. [SPEAKER_01]: I get better cardiovascular fitness improvements. [SPEAKER_01]: I get reduced incidence of injury. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of how you would use like assess [SPEAKER_01]: Is this warm up good or good or not? [SPEAKER_01]: As far as how to do this to me and I want to get your take on this. [SPEAKER_01]: I kind of view there's like three two major components like of a good warm up.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is psychological, the other one's physiological. [SPEAKER_01]: So psychological, you know, type of, type of functions of a warm up. [SPEAKER_01]: Make sure that you have the correct level of a rousal. [SPEAKER_01]: You often talk about the ear extorts and [SPEAKER_01]: Love here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe refine your expectations about around a workout and like the loading on the bar, for example, it kind of gives you real time information on like your performance potential for the day how you're moving, how you're feeling, things at that nature. [SPEAKER_01]: And for folks who had previously maybe been coming off of an injury or have been dealing with an injury, maybe some pain, desensitization.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think those are like the three major like psychologically based [SPEAKER_01]: elements of a good warm up and then physiologically, sure we're going to warm up the literally warm up the muscle, making it.
[SPEAKER_01]: increase in temperature, which you know, things tend to move a little bit better in the body when they're a little warmer that's decreased viscosity in the muscle, things of that nature, and also you get some skill practice with the movement that you're trying to do. [SPEAKER_01]: So those are the two major kind of functions of warm-up as far as I'm, you know, breaking it down, does that make sense to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I like it, and it also leaves room for the concept that warm-up [SPEAKER_00]: Your warm-up doesn't need to be the same thing all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, there's room for it to adjust based on the intent of the session, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So you and I, we might have certain things that are, you know, common elements of our warm-up from session to session, but if it's like a really important session that agree of a rousal and expectations and all sorts of other things going into that session or during a warm-up, we're going to be very different. [SPEAKER_00]: then just a light lighter accessory day or if you're going in just for some low intensity conditioning or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that whether you're warming up quote unquote correctly or in an ideal way or whether you're warming up too much or too little. [SPEAKER_00]: The answer to that is also going to depend on the intent and the purpose of this session. [SPEAKER_00]: So contrasting those is useful way to think about this too. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I agree.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's like this third maybe element of a warm up that I kind of want to put put a bug in your ear as far as like maybe something we hadn't really discussed before maybe haven't that we haven't like codified it you know in our discussion of this. [SPEAKER_01]: But if you look over like a training year right how much time people spend up spend warming up.
[SPEAKER_01]: That presents an opportunity to accumulate a lot of exercise volume that you could maybe apply for improving various other aspects of fitness, whether it's skill-related, whether it's conditioning, whether it's flexibility, requirements for your sport. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's just another opportunity for to accumulate training load. [SPEAKER_01]: So actually, you could improve fitness via some specific elements of the warm-up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just think about those three general things. [SPEAKER_01]: We want to make sure that the person is prepared from a psychological standpoint. [SPEAKER_01]: We want to make sure that it prepared from a physiological standpoint. [SPEAKER_01]: And to the extent, we can use the warm-up to otherwise improve fitness. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's do that. [SPEAKER_01]: So let's talk about how to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe to the crux of this person's question, like, where's the line in the sand you're drawing from like too much warm-up? [SPEAKER_01]: Where it actually causes sufficient amount of fatigue that it lowers how much training low that they can do. [SPEAKER_01]: versus, oh, this is too little warm up, and so you actually don't perform up to your potential, and maybe increase the risk of injury. [SPEAKER_01]: So those, you know, that's maybe the first, the first thought here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as far as how to do it, I generally think for people when we're talking about barbell sport athletes, whether you're a powerlifter, Olympic weightlifter, strongman, CrossFit, or somebody just training for [SPEAKER_01]: health and health and fitness.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think the general, you know, warm-up, so non-specific warm-up elements really have a lot of, I guess, application here, meaning like jumping jacks, for example, or skipping rope, or whatever, or writing a bike for five minutes, just to, quote, you know, warm-up, like this general thing. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not specific to what you're doing in this case squatting first, deadlifting first, something like that. [SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't mean that it's bad, but there's a cost there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's time, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and whether that represents the time that you could otherwise spend training, or you could otherwise spend, you know, with your family, I think it just depends what would you otherwise spend that time on, and then in such. [SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know that I can draw a line in the sand, you know, and say, look, if you do, if you warm up for more than, quote, fifteen minutes. [SPEAKER_01]: then your fatigue is going to be too high.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or if you want, if you warm up for less than five minutes, you're not going to be warmed up enough to maximize your potential. [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be individualized, not only for the workout, like what you're actually doing, but also for the individual. [SPEAKER_01]: Does that kind of makes sense to you? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and even within the person at different points in time, they may have different experiences with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I know that my warm-up process and strategy and how I feel and all that tends to feel [SPEAKER_00]: different depending on, you know, is it a like this morning? [SPEAKER_00]: Actually was at the gym because I had a lot going on today and started warming up at like six a.m. [SPEAKER_00]: right, not my usual, but today's that's when I needed to get it done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other times later in the evening, other times perfect mid afternoon or late morning times lots, sometimes after a twenty four hour shift, sometimes, you know, and so all those are going to have some.
[SPEAKER_00]: differences where, you know, over time you build up enough experience to where you can kind of derive real-time feedback in the same way that we use, you know, maybe some RPE and auto-regulation strategies to select our top weights, you kind of develop that feel for MI sufficiently warmed up to do what I'm trying to do today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that's a little vague in hand-way fee, but that's something that does [SPEAKER_00]: Admittedly, come with experience and why it's worth paying attention to these things. [SPEAKER_00]: So you have that, what we'll call like an interoceptive ability to be quote unquote like in tune with your body and be able to sense those things as accurately as it's possible to sense the middle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the other thing that you're going to have some sort of sense of for each workout is how much time do I actually have? [SPEAKER_01]: So for example, if it's like you don't, you're not coming off shift, you don't have dinner plans or whatever you're like, bro, I got [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as much time as I want. [SPEAKER_01]: So you can spend more time warming up doing whatever taking time between, you know, to rest and whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas if you're like, I got forty five minutes, I need to get something in my warmups are going to be compressed. [SPEAKER_01]: I might, you know, be super setting stuff. [SPEAKER_01]: I might be doing things differently just because of that time of availability, which kind of [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if you're trying to go viral on YouTube, you do an eight minute squat session and everybody loses their minds. [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, okay, we did that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so with respect to this practical implementation, I think that there, maybe this a good framework for it is that there's like a bare minimum and then there's like a maximal type of warm.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for bare minimum, I think that people should have the specific elements included in the warm-up, which means [SPEAKER_01]: Whatever your exercise that you're starting out with, you should be doing that for your specific warm up, starting with a lower amplitude, lower intensity version of that activity, and then gradually progressing towards what you're going to be doing for the workout. [SPEAKER_01]: In this case, like, worksets, for the squat, the deadlift, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if it was running at a particular speed, you would be doing, you know, maybe some walking, some slow speed jogging. [SPEAKER_01]: It could be a cross training, for example, if depending on the activity, but [SPEAKER_01]: something that's just lower intensity, lower amplitude, but does relate to what you're doing and that gradually builds up. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's probably the shortest way to get from. [SPEAKER_01]: Just walk to the gym to, I'm starting my work sets.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I don't know that there's a like, you know, specific number of sets that I would routinely recommend. [SPEAKER_01]: This guy says doing three or four sets. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, that seems fine. [SPEAKER_01]: If he's doing ten or twelve sets, I'm like, well, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: It's probably a little bit too much, but I don't also know that it's detrimental, because you and I would predict that ten or twelve sets of warm-ups would surely likely cause some fatigue, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that would compromise the person's top-end performance during training by some non-zero amount. [SPEAKER_01]: How much is going to be related to how fit they are in the actual programming? [SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know that I care, because during a workout, we're not testing. [SPEAKER_01]: Really, that's not the goal of the workout. [SPEAKER_01]: We do get some information back on how well you're performing, but we're really building.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if it's five percent lighter, ten percent lighter, then it otherwise would be. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that reduces the amount of adaptations that a person gets, the weight is just lower, but it wasn't a test anyway. [SPEAKER_01]: So who cares, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It's more like you'd be have to make the argument that like, look, if I work up to a squat, it's three hundred fifteen for a couple sets of four.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: Reliably better than working up to two ninety five or two eighty five for the same sets of four. [SPEAKER_01]: By the way, I had more volume on the way up due to my instant, you know, extended warm-up. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that I could, I would feel confident about saying that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it depends on, you know, if we're saying we're going to assess your outcomes a year later or five years later, then yeah, that's unlikely to make the difference. [SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, I totally understand somebody who's like, well, if I was otherwise capable of handling a bit more load at the same level of relative effort and fatigue today, I would prefer to do that than not. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that we totally understand that mentality.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if your thought process is like, this is specifically going to be the game changer for like, [SPEAKER_00]: where I end up a decade from now on my training, I don't think that we would be on board with that. [SPEAKER_00]: But those people don't tend to think about their day-to-day training activities and that through that lens.
[SPEAKER_01]: No. [SPEAKER_01]: So just like a for a minimizer or like a bare minimum type of warm-up, I'm thinking three or five sets of progressively increasing weight the jumps at the beginning are likely going to be bigger than the jumps at the end. [SPEAKER_01]: And so for this particular individual, I think I would not start with a ninety-five pound deadlift.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, for somebody who's going to be deadlifting more than two hundred and something pounds just start with one thirty five or sixty kilos. [SPEAKER_01]: We're depending on where you're at in the world. [SPEAKER_01]: First squat. [SPEAKER_01]: If you want to start with ninety five, like I've done that before, particularly when I'm either stiff or feeling, um, you know, some pain or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, it's also my favorite thing to do in the warm-up room is to start with like forty kilos and then end up at two hundred kilos rather than like [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm starting with seventy kilos. [SPEAKER_01]: I can do that, but like I just want to make sure that I get some opportunity to move in a low stakes type of situation, which lower stakes lower weight in this particular situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's like a bare minimum type recommendation for a maximizer or somebody who has extended time and maybe wants to [SPEAKER_01]: Optimize their warm-up through the lens of like long-term training adaptations fitness adaptations. [SPEAKER_01]: I still think that specific component is that's gold. [SPEAKER_01]: Keep that, but then let's add on to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what I would think about is before then, [SPEAKER_01]: Any sort of fitness related adaptations, fitness related characteristics that you'd want to develop. [SPEAKER_01]: That's an opportunity for you to practice them under a, you know, again, low stakes type of situation. [SPEAKER_01]: So if it's a skill thing for like CrossFit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, when I was doing CrossFit, we would start with some front rack like practice and like overhead position, site practice because I just need a more exposure to those. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's empty bar, dial, training bar, something like that and double under practice because I was bad at double unders. [SPEAKER_01]: But not [SPEAKER_01]: a near maximal set of double under is nothing too high intensity, but it's just rep, you're just getting reps in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: And I would set a timer. [SPEAKER_01]: All right, five minutes, I'm practicing my sauce press. [SPEAKER_01]: For example, five minutes, I'm practicing a full hand around front rack position. [SPEAKER_01]: Five minutes, I'm practicing double under's and again, you're just, yeah, one workout.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to make a big difference, but, you know, if I worked out three hundred days out of the year or whatever, and I did, [SPEAKER_01]: two hundred fifty those workouts with the you know some of the skill that exposure well that's likely to improve my my my fitness through that that so I kind of think about warmups those two type senses and that's kind of my recommendation
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think this person for their specific scenario for a practical takeaway, I definitely like the idea of like, hey, experiment with dropping out some of the increments at the lower end of the range. [SPEAKER_00]: Because you can afford to make those bigger jumps and you're not likely to accidentally overshoot in that territory, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But once you are approaching the weight where it's like, okay, based on my RPE target for the day or my load target, I need to actually have a better sense of like, is that gonna be the right weight for today or not? [SPEAKER_00]: That's when you might need to get a little bit finer jumps or [SPEAKER_00]: You know, smaller increments to be able to fine tune that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we've talked about before like our quote unquote indicator weights of like [SPEAKER_00]: I'll lift this weight and that's what tells me. [SPEAKER_00]: Am I good to jump to this or do I need to hold it down to that? [SPEAKER_00]: Neither of us can really tell from like, seventy kilos. [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's going to be the case, but once we get up to, you know, two hundred kilos to twenty to fifty depending on the lift, whatever the case is, that's when we feel more confident. [SPEAKER_00]: So that means that the lower weights are maybe a little bit more useful for like the physiologic aspects of the warmup. [SPEAKER_00]: And then the higher end weights are more for like the fine-tuning calibration.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe even less psychological preparation of like what's this about to feel like? [SPEAKER_00]: Get on my confident. [SPEAKER_00]: That's going to go. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe a good heuristic is if you regularly find yourself surprised by how your works at weight feels. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, your jump from your last warm-up to your work set is probably too big. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's that's reasonable. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's aligned in the sand, I got a draw. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying max ten percent. [SPEAKER_01]: Can you jump from your last warm-up to your to your work set? [SPEAKER_01]: That's made up. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it feels truthy. [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, here's a good interesting question though before we move on and I know we kind of beat this thing to death. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just a warm-up so like whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you believe in your heart of hearts that there's good evidence showing that doing a warm-up reduces the risk of injury? [SPEAKER_00]: I am not confident in that nor have I done a ton of search on it. [SPEAKER_01]: But I went down the rabbit hole because I, you know, you just want to find how confident should I be in this opinion?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, problem with the assessing date on this because yeah, if you look, there's systematic reviews, meta analyses, all sorts of like longitudinal data showing look. [SPEAKER_01]: If you take two groups of athletes and you put one of them, they get the FIFA eleven or they get, you know, Nordic hamstring or whatever it is. [SPEAKER_01]: And the other group does in, well, that group who did the quote warm up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: has a reduced injury risk over the season. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, they did more training. [SPEAKER_01]: So like, that's what you're effectively, what you're saying. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not really surprising to me. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not in the acute setting like do this warm-up reduce injury. [SPEAKER_01]: That's not been shown in the evidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's tough thing to control for, definitely, I mean, arguably impossible to, like, blind in any meaningful way. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love where I do it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Why am I suddenly so warm? [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: There's also not great evidence that, like, a warm-up actually improves performance to a level that would otherwise increase fitness adaptations.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I mean by that is when you look at data on, like, warming up versus no warm-up, just like, going and trying to, like, lift, there's not, like, a one-r-m versus, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: What happens in both scenarios and then subsequently if you do that for twelve weeks these people gain less strength or more strength?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I am inclined to believe that the well training volume that you get the training load that you're exposed yourself to via a warm-up [SPEAKER_01]: contributes on some level. [SPEAKER_01]: I am also convinced or at least feel like relatively confident that the warm-up helps you select loads better.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm less convinced that like it matters largely for long-term training adaptations or injury risk reduction outside of just additional training that you would otherwise accomplish. [SPEAKER_01]: And so, with through that, I'm kind of, I would prefer, I guess, somebody do the warm-up rather than like worry about the couple percent extra they might get from doing less warm-ups for a single session. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, unless you're testing, I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.