Yes, boys and girls, warmup is highly overrated.
Member
Warming up on an exercise bike
Hi Coach
Just wanted to bring this to your attention cos you may not have seen this yet. There's this scientist online making YT videos and recently he got ahold of a thermal camera, so now he's having fun. One of the videos he did is one where he films himself on an exercise bike just to see where the heat in his body goes. Interestingly, little to no heat can be seen in his legs or trunk, where you'd expect most of the heat to be. Instead, almost all of the heat is transferred to the arms. You can see this occurring at the 10-minute mark on his sped up timer. Additionally, after about 5 minutes of this heat build up, there are no significant changes to where the major heat source is located.
Just another reason not to spend 30 minutes on an exercise bike "warming up for barbells". With science.
Video if you're interested: Thermal Camera reveals how your body dumps heat while exercising! - YouTube (warning: half naked scientist on an exercise bike with pounding pounding techno music).
TMPHBITEU
Yes, boys and girls, warmup is highly overrated.
Member
Picks up heat at the surface skin only...Not the muscles underneath.
His arms were reading hot before he even started, then actually got cooler for a while.
Sweat probably cooling his skin down pretty good...And his legs are the only thing moving (air circulating, EVAP, etc)
Human body works pretty good.
Same gay ass shit as emg studies.
Spacediver would recommend rectal probe
Member
This is a good point, this is showing how the body expunges heat from. Not necessarily the temperature of the musculature.Originally Posted by MBasic
Wat
TMPHBITEU
Spacediver craves precision and accuracy.
Member
Speaking of warming up for squats, my go to is now light overhead press and a few shoulder dislocates. Try alternating those before and in between warmup sets if you have trouble coaxing the bar into position when you are cold.
Member
Used to do some presses and hangs from a chinup bar for exactly this purpose. Elbow hasn't bothered me in months, so I don't need to do any of that stuff anymore which is nice. But yeah, doing this works great.
Member
I don't really think the point of "warming up" is literrally to bring heat to your limbs. What is the heat difference ever going to be inside a non-ill body anyway? A few degrees?
Let's rather call it "waking up", or "pre training".
Member
Exactly. I do 5 minutes on the elliptical before I lift and I don't do it because it's cold outside. I do it because like you said, it "wakes" my body up. I sit in an office all day and the elliptical gives me chance to get my knees moving and get the heart pumping a bit faster before getting under a bar. It just feels good, period.
Member
I have the incredibly luxury of not owning a motorised vehicle, so I just show up to the gym and claim a barbell. It's about a 5-10 minute bike ride or 20-30 minute walk, so I never really have to do side splits with a band around my knees or leg swings or extra cardio. Sucks when it's raining, though.
By the way, no-one is saying warmups are stupid. Riding a bike to wake up or after a day of sitting at a desk or even if you just really like doing it is fine. I merely agree with the view Rip has espoused elsewhere (and in this thread, too, though much more succinctly) which is that excessive warmup, by definition, is a waste of time. If I were to ride a bike for 10 minutes after having done so for 10 minutes to get to the gym, then I'm wasting 10 minutes of my day that I'm never getting back. If you feel tight and creaky and slow when you arrive at the gym, you may want to hop on a bike if that makes you feel better, actually or subjectively (i.e. in the mind only).
To the point of the name of the thing, itself, that's just the way language works. Calling a blend of milk/water with whey, creatine, salt, peanut butter, and (shit, I don't know. What else do people put in these things?) BCAAs (nailed it) a "protein shake" is another one of those damned conventions of language. Why protein? There's a whole list of other ingredients! Why not call it a water shake or a milk shake or a fitness shake? Why shake? Why not call it a cocktail or a blend or a drink? But because one guy at some time in some place (possibly many guys at many places all at once, individually) coined the term "protein shake" and it was memeable enough to use and reuse. Same thing with warmup. Sure, you could call it waking up or pre-training or even technique drills, but a warmup is all of those things to us anyway and it's a term used by lots and lots of other people who will immediately associate certain motives, processes, and consequences upon hearing and interpreting the word (thus a convention).
You're free to have your own definition for the idea of prepping your body for heavy barbell work, but be prepared to hear "what's that?" every time you use that word in conversation with anyone who doesn't use the same word as you. For the sake of economy, warmup.
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