Warming up

[MSJ]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering when weight training how much/how should you warm up before you reach your target weight. Often I feel that I could have lifted the weight if I hadn't done so many repetitions with lighter weights before. Also how should you work up to doing a 1RM, as the lowest number of reps I've done before is 5 and I would like to find what my 1RM is. Would appreciate any advice.

Thanks

[1fever]

At the risk of being yelled at I will give you what I do. For the warm-up you "wake up" your body. Normally, I will jog for 10 -12 mins at an 8 min mile pace and a 1.0 incline(or whatever gets you sweating it doesn't necessarily have to be that fast or that slow or for that long). This is fitness heresy though, because most trainers don't like the pre-workout jog as a warm-up. I find it clears my head and gets me "locked in" to working out when I step off the treadmill and stare down the weights, usually with some crazy Metal playing in my headphones. The reason it's not liked is it drops your glycogen stores which is used as energy for the lift. You also should do some bodyweight excercises and mainly focused on what you are looking to work on for that day. On leg day I will do 5-8 air squats prior to hitting the squat rack then 5-8 light weight reps before hitting it hard. For chest pushups before bench and so on. Do not do more then 10 warm up reps b/c you will begin to release lactic acid and lose the effect of the lift. As you get stronger you can add weight to your warm-ups. Also research Dynamic stretching and avoid static stretching as a part of your warm-up. Take or leave the treadmill piece at the beginning but warm-ups are a huge part of the work-out. Check out this site for good 1RM calculator http://www.timinvermont.com/fitness/orm.htm

[Alethea]

Warmup:

Around 2-5 minutes of fullbody movement (jogging, jumping jacks, skip rope) to get blood flowing to all your muscles and raise your heart-beat. Then dynamic stretching (toe touching/leg raising/arm circles/BW squats) to enable your muscles to move smoothly in their full range of motion. Then before each exercise, light weights mimicing whatever heavy weight you're going to do so your body gets the idea of what's expected and effectively mobilizes your muscles (usually 10-12 reps of the bar).

In terms of increasing weights, you'll have to ask someone else. My weight isn't high enough yet for me to have a good system - I just keep adding 20-50 lbs until I hit my max in 5 sets.