Warm-ups are generally perceived as not fun. This view is a great shame and almost universal now with

gym-lovers, athletes and even coaches; but why is this the case?

It appears the most widespread reason is quite simply boredom. Scenario 1 - people who train in gyms warm-up for five minutes by running on the treadmill, cycling on the bike or worse, ‘skiing’ on the elliptical trainer. Scenario 2 – people who play sports (i.e. football, rugby) warm-up by running around the field for five minutes and then perform a few ‘half-bothered’ static stretches.

A second reason is a lack of knowledge. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to cycle for five minutes followed immediately by a 1-rep max bench press attempt. Your potential won’t be realized and more importantly, your shoulder girdle is going to suffer. These instances are all too common and what’s more, disadvantageous to your performance and well-being.

The Modern Day Warm-Up A warm-up creates a starting point for fitness or sporting sessions and refers to preparing you for performance. In fact, at Absolute Fitness (AF) we actually refer to a warm-up as ‘movement preparation’. During this time, you should aim to be as specific as possible in reference to the action/activity/exercises you intend to perform.

A warm-up can and should be fun! It should also be hugely productive in correcting specific

By Jonny ParrPhotography by Reine Atrach

A suitable warm-up is the key to correcting movement, relieving pain and improving overall results in or out of the gym. Jonny Parr from Absolute Fitness explains how to do it in the most productive manner possible.

Move Better, Feel Better!

Absolute Fitness trainer Ryan Bell demonstrates towel squats -- a commonly used warm-up technique

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areas such as flexibility or mobility. At AF, there are five areas we consider during a warm-up. In total, this should take you no longer than 15 minutes. Trust me this little time spent on warming up correctly will pay dividends both in terms of your quality of life and performance.

1. SMR (Self Myofascial Release) Self Myofascial Release refers to massaging the muscles and is often known as ‘cheap man’s massage’. You will get some of the benefits of a qualified masseuse but without the awkward conversation and price tag!

Techniques and tools vary but the intention always remains the same – to improve the quality of your muscle tissue; the exact nature of how this works involves pressing and creating tension on a particular or series of muscle groups. This then leads to muscle spindles relaxing (sensed by the Golgi tendon organ). This is very effective at relieving tension/knots within muscles that tend to develop through repetitive movement patterns and injuries. By applying Fascia Release techniques, you can significantly reduce and ease chronic injuries, recover quicker from exercise, improve your ROM (range of motion), and function better throughout everyday life and during all types of performance.

There are various tools you can use to apply this method of self-massage. The foam roller

is, unsurprisingly, the most popular as it was purposely designed for this type of training. However you can also use a range of sports balls that are of different size and density. In fact, I would argue that in many circumstances this is actually better than the foam roller as you can manipulate the ball to suit your needs.

2. Raise And Mobilization ‘Raise’ refers to elevating body temperature, heart rate, respiration rate, blood flow and joint fluid viscosity. Mobilization refers to improving movement, range of motion and function of the joints.

At AF, we target both raise and mobilization via specifically selected exercises that are performed in a back-to-back circuit format. This means we perform each exercise for a prescribed number of reps before progressing to the next.

In essence, we raise the temperature of the body while improving joint health and integrity. We’ve found this saves us more time, all the while preparing the body for the subsequent demands of the session. An example of a routine we have clients perform is below and takes as little as three minutes. In this example we use nothing more than body-weight and a towel.

An instructional video of the routine can also be found on the Absolute Fitness YouTube channel – www.youtube.com/AbsoluteFitnessME.

1. Towel Dislocates x 5-10 reps 2. Towel Retractions x 5-10 reps 3. Towel Depressions x 5-10 reps 4. Towel W, L, Y, Ts x 5-10 each 5. Towel Push-Ups x 5-10 reps 6. Towel Squats x 5-10 reps 7. Towel Overhead Squats x 5-10 reps 8. Towel Overhead Reverse Lunges x 5-10 reps per leg 9. Towel Good Mornings x 5-10 reps 10. Towel Lateral Lunges x 5-10 reps per leg

Check back next month for the final two areas of the warm-up up puzzle – muscle activation and potentiation. n

Focusing on the muscle groups in his legs, Ryan uses a foam roller to implement self myofascial release

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