A Friendly Nudge - Don't Skip the Prep
...because we all could use a little encouragement!
I guess I’m a slow learner. Over the years my body tried to send me all kinds of hints about the importance of preparation but I was too busy to listen. I was always in a hurry to skip ahead to the good part. I assumed that my frequent strains and tweaks were just bad luck or the result of (as a doc once said to me) “miles and birthdays.” I’m sure age has some role to play, but as I’d found with cooking, the right kind of preparation before you dive in makes the task that follows not only more enjoyable but it can significantly improve your results.
If you’re not familiar with mise en place, it’s a French culinary phrase that basically means, everything in its place. In other words, get ready before you start. And it doesn’t just mean to chop up the ingredients and have them arranged logically. It means to understand the goals, the sequence and the details. Once I became a mise en place convert, cooking got a lot more enjoyable and decidedly less hectic.
I’m now trying to adopt a similar approach when it comes to exercise and I’m already noticing a difference. My physical therapist always starts any of my sessions with some type of warm up. It might be a few minutes on a stationary bike, some easy skips or side shuffles, or enough reps of something like the world’s greatest stretch to increase my heart rate– but it’s always something to get the blood flowing. Once we start with the actual exercises, we consistently do a few warm up sets before we get into the heavier working sets. That seemed intuitive when we were doing something like deadlifts because I wouldn’t dream of just walking up to 300 pounds and trying to pick it up without warming up first. But when my wrist was bothering me the other day I realized that I’ve been doing a non-trivial portion of my workouts at the gym and at home without doing warm up sets first.
And most of the time I got away with it, but sometimes I didn’t and life’s too short to keep making the same avoidable mistakes over and over. Hopefully by spending a little extra time on those warm up sets I’ll spend less time dealing with tweaks and strains.
So what are we trying to accomplish with a warm up? We’re trying to get our bodies ready for the upcoming exercise or exercises and minimize the chances of injury.
So what does that look like? We want to gradually increase our heart rate and give our muscles a chance to warm up. This increases blood and oxygen flow and by warming up our muscles, ligaments and tendons we make them more pliable and less susceptible to injury. Movement also helps our joints produce and better distribute synovial fluid so they glide a little better and creak and hurt a little less.
Warming up also gives our muscles and nervous system a chance to get on the same page.
This is where exercise specific warm ups are important. Something like walking or a few minutes on a stationary bike are helpful for a general warm up, but doing an easy warm up set of a specific exercise gives our muscles and nervous system a chance to rehearse and figure out who’s doing what before you start dialing up the intensity on them.
With weighted exercises at home and at the gym, I’m starting with a light weight, maybe 50% of my working set for 8 reps and then a set of 4 reps with 70% of my working weight and finally a set of 2 reps with 85-90% of my working weight. As the task difficulty increases, our bodies recruit more and larger motor units. A motor unit is a single nerve cell and all of the muscle fibers that it controls. When the nerve fires, all of the muscle fibers that it controls contract together as a single unit. By gradually increasing the weight, we’re allowing our bodies to ramp up our
For body weight exercises like pushups, I might start with 10-15 pushups against a bench or kitchen counter before I start doing regular pushups and I do my first set of regular pushups at a slow controlled pace, paying extra attention to form. With something like body weight squats, I might do a few sink squats nice and slow or just do regular air squats but do 10-15 at a modest depth before taking my next set to a deeper depth.
I used to just dive into cooking a meal and it didn’t just feel hectic and rushed– it was hectic and rushed. Once I started getting my ducks in a row before I even turned on the stove, the whole process felt more relaxed and enjoyable. Prepping became sort of a mindfulness exercise, weirdly meditative. Exercise has gotten more like that for me. I pay a lot more attention to how the reps and sets are feeling and I’m more deliberate and present. As a result I’m getting stronger and I know that I’m reducing my risk of injury.
Take a little extra time this week and see how a few warm up sets can make a difference in how those harder sets land.
And while you’re savoring how those warm up sets are improving the effectiveness of your working sets, you can treat yourself to this week’s delicious dessert.
Dates and Blueberry Bark
Dates, dark chocolate, peanut butter, blueberries and sea salt are such a tasty combination. The chia seeds help make sort of a blueberry compote and bump up the fiber a little.
Ingredients:
16 dates, cut in half and the pit removed
2 ½ tbsp chia seeds
½ cup water
4 oz blueberries
3-5 oz dark chocolate (I used 70%)
3-5 oz peanut butter
Flaked sea salt
I gave you a range on the chocolate and peanut butter because restraint is mildly overrated.
Rinse the blueberries and add them, the chia seeds and water to a sauce pan and simmer over medium - low heat for about 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool off enough to place in the fridge. Put the blueberry mixture in a bowl and put in the fridge to cool.
Rough chop the dark chocolate and put in a microwave safe bowl and heat in the microwave for 1 minute. Stir and then microwave for another 30 seconds and check to see if the chocolate is melted. If necessary, microwave for another 30 seconds.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and split the dates lengthwise, remove the pits and put them in a rectangle or any other pattern that appeals to you on the parchment paper. Put another sheet of parchment paper over the dates and press them flat.
Carefully peel off the parchment and spread the peanut butter on top of the dates. Then add the blueberry mixture, followed by the melted chocolate. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt and put the tray in the freezer for 15 minutes to set.
Cut into squares and store in an airtight container in the fridge.
Enjoy!
Now let’s give you some exercise options for the week.
I still like my exercise snacks but I’m less likely to try to knock out a max set of an exercise without doing some type of warmup or ease in type of sets first. Using the stability ball chest press as an example, if my working set is going to be 25 pound dumbbells, I’ll do a set of 8 reps with 10 pounds. Then a set of 4 reps with 15 pound dumbbells and a set of 2 with 20 pounds. Finally, I’ll do 2-3 sets of 8 reps of my working sets with 25 pound dumbbells. It takes a little longer to do, but it’s reducing your risk of injury and it will improve your results over time.
The amount of warm up we need is based on the intensity of the exercise. The higher the intensity, the more deliberate we want to be about preparing our bodies for the work. I don’t do a 15 minute warm up ahead of going for an easy walk, but the first part of my walks is usually at a little slower pace while everything is warming up.