[00:00:00] James Breese: Strength matters, media, video, print, podcasts.
[00:00:05] Josh Kennedy: Today's topic is, are warmups worth it? Now, this was something that came up on Twitter, on my Twitter timeline, a couple of coaches disagreeing, let's say, uh, on whether the warmups were, were worth it or not, and, you know, suggesting that. Strength and conditioning coaches, uh, trainers, whatever it is, have loved their acronyms, like the RAMP protocol.
[00:00:27] Um, there's a couple of coaches arguing that all you need is a, is a basketball and a few minutes to get your heart rate up. And, uh, and then, and then you're done and away you go. And then a very well known coach who I won't name on here, but he's a good friend of the show. He strongly disagreed. Um. saying that maybe we've made warmups too long or complicated, but it doesn't decrease the importance.
[00:00:48] So my question to you, James, is what is your opinion on warmups and has it changed over the
[00:00:54] James Breese: years? Oh, what a great question. And I'm going to name that said coaching. I say it's Mike Boyle. So I'm going to say it's [00:01:00] Mike Boyle because I quite enjoy. Going on to Twitter on a regular basis, having a cup of tea and coffee and seeing what he's arguing with or who he's arguing with.
[00:01:08] Because it makes for fascinating, entertaining reading for five minutes. And then you go, Oh my God, these guys are crazy. And then you go away, basically.
[00:01:15] Josh Kennedy: The thing is actually, before you answer the question, I can't believe people are actually arguing about warmups in the first place. But anyway, they are.
[00:01:22] There you go.
[00:01:23] James Breese: Yeah, they are. It's what it is. So, are warm ups effective? Should you be doing them? Yes. However, there's a caveat to this. Over the years, we've realized that most people are not interested in doing warm ups. So, it becomes a battle when you're working with athletes to get them to do the warm ups in the first place.
[00:01:45] So, you have to find ways and methods to get them to do it. Without them realizing they're doing it or you're controlling them in certain ways. Now, the one thing I love the most is the idea of we always like to get people doing foam rolling right at the start. Now, [00:02:00] depending on what you think about foam rolling, whether it's effective or not, the point that we use it the most for is the fact that it gets them, it stops my athletes, the cricket guys from talking, right?
[00:02:09] They come in the training, they're all excited, they're all really happy. They wanted, they literally just want to start chatting and like making fun of each other. So what I do is. Put them on the foam roller for a couple of minutes, let them have their chats, you know, get, you know, be silly with each other and play their little jokes.
[00:02:22] And then they go from the foam roller into dynamic movement where they're concentrating now, having got that out of their system from talking so much. So it's a, it's a, it's a useful tool we have. Yes, it helps with proprioceptive feedback. We don't, we don't think the, we definitely don't think you should be foam rolling for hours on end, but a couple of minutes at the start to get the body ready, prepared.
[00:02:44] Yeah, it is. Targeted framework for what they're going to do and the exercise they're going to do. But yeah, so we we've now learned over the years that some people need a longer warp than others. They're the ones who have serious mobility issues. So we've got to spend more time warming them up to spend time with the mobility that they won't be doing [00:03:00] any other time because we've got to keep them accountable for this.
[00:03:03] And in other times if they're time crunched or They have less mobility needs than the others. We can shorten it down. So we have blocks of five, 10, 15 minutes, depending on the athlete we're working with. We never want to go above 15 minutes because that's just, it's just overkill. Most of the time, it'll be five minutes warmup, five minutes activation, or less than two to three minutes activation straight into the workout for most people who are fit, healthy and raring to go.
[00:03:26] So, but the point is, from what we've seen over the years, the older the athlete, the more warmups they need, the longer the warmup they need. Because they have a higher risk of injury and they need to work on it more than most other people because their mobility sucks. That's what we tend to see from older athletes.
[00:03:42] Yeah,
[00:03:42] Josh Kennedy: as you say, the older you get, the longer and warm up you need, the more important it becomes. So maybe you can get away with it a little bit more when you are younger, you know, just throw a basketball around potentially and get on with your workout when you're young, but certainly as you age, you can't get away with that.
[00:03:57] And as Mike Boyle points out on his Twitter [00:04:00] arguments, um. If you want to decrease your rate of injury, then you need a, you need a good warmup, but it doesn't mean your warmup has to last for half an hour. And if, as we say, targeted foam rolling, targeted mobility, some good dynamic, uh, exercises, a bit of activation, get you ready for the session that you're going to do.
[00:04:19] And there was, there was another thing on, uh, I saw on, on Twitter, um, which is again, it's around the mobility thing. A guy said he'd done some mobility, hip mobility with his athletes. Then they started squatting. He realized that they are great mobility, hip mobility when they're squatting. So why does he need to continue to do it?
[00:04:38] And it's like, well, maybe they've got great hip mobility and great squats because you are doing it. So if you stop doing it, don't look, if you, you know, you use it or lose it, then they suddenly won't have. Yeah, they'll lose it. You know, they won't have great squat. So you've got to maintain. Um, so it's not a good idea to just stop doing that mobility.
[00:04:59] And [00:05:00] again, relates back to some of the cricket guys. Um, we spent a month with one of our guys doing some mobility, really poor shoulder mobility, really poor T spine mobility. We got him to a much better place. And now we're just maintaining because if we stop completely, yeah. You might go back because it's not a case of going, Oh, it's great now.
[00:05:17] So I can, so I can stop it. You've got to continue these things. Maintain don't need to go crazy, but you've got to maintain, right? We've
[00:05:24] James Breese: gone from like 20, 30 minute sessions with him down to the standard three to five minutes at the start of workouts. Just to maintain it. That's what we've done. So, yeah.
[00:05:34] So like our warm is effective? Yes. If you do them correctly. Don't do death by warmup because the athletes get bored. The clients get bored. You need to be specific with them. But have a system, like our system is very simple. We, we do the foam rolling to get out the system, get them moving. We do some dynamic stretching and mobility work.
[00:05:50] Then we do this, the short amount of activation work, so it's prime ready to go. And then what we always do is we always match what we've done in the warm ups to the cool dams. That way that's where we do the, the [00:06:00] static stretching. Okay. So that's how we approach it.
[00:06:03] Josh Kennedy: Exactly. As you say, have a system. I think that's really important.
[00:06:06] If you've got a system of warmups, then you won't be, you won't be wasting your time, it'll all be targeted to, uh, your, your client's needs and the workouts. And, uh, yeah, it'll be, it'll be effective. It will reduce injury, uh, incidents. Definitely. Which is what you want. Obviously do no harm. First rule of training.
[00:06:21] James Breese: Do you know how? Yeah, exactly. And if you, if you wonder where should I be doing mobility, or if you're not sure what mobility should be doing. Well, do the basics. Top of the toe, you know, ankles, hips, T spine, shoulders. That, that's, that's a really good place to start.
[00:06:35] Josh Kennedy: Yeah, exactly. Definitely T spine.
[00:06:37] James Breese: Really good place to start, particularly if you're working with throwing athletes like we are.
[00:06:41] Like their shoulders are a mess, an absolute mess. There's a lot of work we need to do with their shoulders. to help un gunkify it, if that's a word, un gunkify their shoulders. Un
[00:06:50] Josh Kennedy: gunkify. I like it. That's a new phrase. We'll put it in the Oxford English Dictionary and we will finish there. Un gunkify. Love it.
[00:06:58] That is it for today. [00:07:00] Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. And if you want to find out more about our system of training, go to strengthmanners. com forward slash system.