Warm Up: How To Avoid Workout Injuries

Warming Up is Lame

How often have you gone to the gym and seen the big guys lifting “light” weights? Did you think, “Wow, even I can lift that much…they must be all looks and no strength,” like I used to?

Welcome to the club. Shocker here, get ready: There’s a reason they’re lifting those lighter weights, and it’s not because they’re weak. They’re warming up.

Experienced athletes understand that starting off at 100% is a sure-fire way to get hurt. They know that muscles need to warm up to handle the strenuous exercise they’re about to go through. Without that warm up, the muscles and joints are significantly stiffer and more prone to strain and injury.

And herein lies the reason those big guys are lifting lighter weights than it seems they should. Injuries pull you away from your goal, taking valuable time from your training and efforts to maintain a healthy lifestyle. So despite the fact that you may not be looking like the Gym King (trademark pending) with your heavy weights from the outset, you’ll be that much closer to ensuring that you’re able to make it through the intense workout without injury.

Fine, Warming Up Is Important. Is It Just Stretching?

Well, stretching is good, but it isn’t the aspect of warming up I’ll be discussing here. Focusing on specific weight ranges, compared to your goal weight, is key to making sure your body is primed for the punishing sets it’s about to endure. Before outlining the warm-up specifics, however, I’d like to highlight the weight and reps you should be shooting for. Michael Matthews’ book Bigger Leaner Stronger turned me on to this, and I haven’t had a serious workout injury since.

When prioritizing strength gain, you should work with a weight that yields muscle failure between the 4th and 6th rep of a set. It makes sense to call this your “Target Weight” for that exercise. Keep this in mind for the steps below!

Warm up each major muscle group in a workout, on the first exercise targeting that muscle group. An example of this is Biceps and Triceps. You don’t need to do warm up sets for both Dumbbell Curls and Hammer Curls, because these both target the bicep. Instead, do the warmup sets on the first bicep exercise only (Dumbbell Curls). If you’re doing a full arm workout and are also working out triceps that day, make sure you also do a full warmup for your first tricep exercise (weighted close-grip dips are a good example here).

Proper Warm Up

Set 1: 10 slow, steady reps at 50% of your Target Weight
Set 2: 10 slightly faster, steady reps at 50% of your Target Weight
Set 3: 4 slow, steady reps at 75% of your Target Weight
Sets 4-6: Normal sets targeting 4-6 reps to failure at 100% of your Target Weight

Following this for every workout has helped me gain significant strength while also mitigating any injuries that I would have encountered along the way. Goodbye, pinched nerves I used to get every month or so that would have me turning my head like Batman and out of the gym for a week!

Forget Impressing Everyone at the Gym and Focus On Form!

Here’s a fun fact: No one at the gym is looking at you or really cares about how you look when you’re working out. Unless you’re doing something like squats in the leg press with your back against the footplate, that’s hilarious. No, people are typically focused on getting better and looking at themselves – just like you. Instead of focusing on them, focus on yourself and the form of your reps for each exercise. I’d like to take a brief moment to outline some of the highlights of my own injuries, all due to a serious lack of form and entirely too much focus on how strong I looked, felt, or how loud I was.

Strained rotator cuff

I was putting up 275lbs on incline bench press in the early 2010’s, trying for a PR (personal record)/1RM (one-rep max). My body wasn’t fully challenged after lifting 250 lbs successfully, so I pumped that up to 275 lbs. I got the bar off the rack, and it came down controlled…and it stayed there as I tried to push upward in pain. I still laugh about how my friend Scott, who was spotting me for that set, said “At least you got it down!” as though I had a choice! This wound up killing any shoulder, chest, or back workouts for around 2 weeks.

Herniated disc in my lower back

This was the single worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I was doing deadlifts in my home gym several years back and was trying to put the weight down quietly so I didn’t bother my wife and kids upstairs at ~5am. Well, trying to gently set down a lot of weight strains the body differently than when you’re lifting it up. As I was setting the weight down, the disc ruptured/burst and I pretty much went blind with pain. I was absolutely, completely debilitated to the degree that I was barely able to collect my thoughts and explain things when I went to the doctor. The recovery timeframe took me out of all exercise for about 1.5 months, and I still have to remind myself on every set of squats and deadlifts that I need to focus on form, form, form. And to wear the damn belt.

Torn meniscus in my right knee

Probably too late, but ugly photo incoming below! I was squatting 185lbs ass-to-grass (which means I was going full range of motion, touching my butt to my heels), which was a relatively mid-level weight for me to work with at that time. What was I not paying attention to? FORM. I was literally bouncing off my heels! Well, on the 3rd or 4th rep I heard the sound of a rubber band snap through my headphones, which were playing some metalcore jams not at all quietly. Adrenalin helped me get the weight up and racked, after which I called my now-wife, telling her that I think I’ll have to go to the hospital soon. Yup, that rubber band snap was a partial tear of my right knee’s medial meniscus, which I had to have surgically corrected to be able to run, work out legs, and really just be comfortable walking for any length of time.

Now that we’ve gotten past that, let’s talk about proper form. If you’re new to the gym, make sure to watch a video or two on the exercises you’re planning to make sure that you know how to do them! Focus on slow, controlled movement, executing a full range of motion for each exercise. Don’t bounce on your squats (like I did), don’t swing the dumbbells up when you’re getting those curls in, don’t shotgun reps on bench press. Stop worrying about the heavy weights to impress your buddies and the ladies that are totally checking you out. Instead, focus on your form, do the exercises properly, and listen to your body.

Your Body Talks. Listen To It.

Sweet segue! The final part of this post is to tell you that your body communicates with you on everything, from hunger and what sounds good for dinner to whether you overdid it on that last rep. The body talks, and you’ll be better off if you listen to it. I thought I was just amazing when I was younger, and I of course had the strength and willpower to push through a pinched nerve because I was a badass.

Well, after this resulted in me being out for a week (over and over again), I tried something different. I heard my body telling me to stop, and I did. And guess what happened?

I wasn’t out for a full week. I still took 3 to 4 days off each time the nerve was pinched, but that was much better than the 7+ days it would take to recover when trying to steamroll through the pain. There’s something to be said about the mental game and whether the pain is real. I’m a huge David Goggins fan (definitely read Can’t Hurt Me if you want to be humbled and inspired), but when the pain hinders your day-to-day life, I whole-heartedly subscribe to taking a break for recovery over trying to push through legitimate pain. Please note, though, that I’m talking about pain from things like tweaking a nerve or tearing a tendon. Soreness after a really good workout is not only normal, but a good sign that you tore the muscle appropriately so that it can repair and grow (this is how muscle grows!).

Pushing harder in situations where real pain was present always took me out of the gym for a much longer period of time.

Conclusion!

You did it! Thanks for reading. I’ve summarized the content in a TL;DR below in case you’d like to revisit the highlights without going through the whole article.

Warm up every day you work out. It’s lame and takes more time, I know. Just do it, and thank me when you don’t get injured.
Warm up correctly! Take it from my own personal experience: the 3 warm-up sets outlined below will help you to be injury-free and in the gym consistently.
- Set 1: 10 slow, steady reps at 50% of your Target Weight
- Set 2: 10 slightly faster, steady reps at 50% of your Target Weight
- Set 3: 4 slow, steady reps at 75% of your Target Weight
Focus on form, above all else. If this means you need to decrease your weight to do the exercise properly, so be it. You’ll work back to the weight you’re at today with incorrect form, and you’ll be much stronger for it.
Listen to your body! If it’s telling you to stop, stop. Come back tomorrow. But don’t push yourself to the point that one ruined workout results in many.

Book Recommendations

As mentioned, Can’t Hurt Me and Bigger Leaner Stronger are outstanding books. Whether you’re a reader or not, I highly recommend picking both of these up.

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Warm Up: How To Avoid Workout Injuries

Warming Up is Lame