You know something occurred to me yesterday. I never do warm up sets for my body weight exercises. I just go right into them. That might actually be a mistake. A mistake I plan to remedy right away.
I mean, I do warm up sets on Deadlifts and barbell C&P. So why wouldn’t I do them when working on body weight strength exercises like pull-ups and push-ups? If I were to just go for my working weight on the deadlift, it would feel really heavy and I might get hurt. But since I start with a lighter weight, and every set gets progressively heavier, by the time I reach my working weight it doesn’t feel as heavy.
Here’s how I plan on going about it with body weight exercises. Let’s take the push-up as an example. My working “weight” will be close grip push-ups. I don’t touch my hands together, like diamond push-ups, because I find that it hurts my biceps. I can do a modified diamond by using push-up bars. With bars there isn’t as much torque placed on the wrist and forearm.
My warmup to working weight will go as follows:
Push-ups (5 sets of 3 reps)
3 pushups on knees
3 regular width push-ups
3 closer width pushups (midway between regular and final close grip)
3 close grip push-ups
3 close grip push-ups
Let’s say the final “weight” will be regular pull-ups
Pull-ups (5 sets of 3 reps)
3 Australian pull-ups
3 Australian pull-ups with feet on chair
3 half pull-ups
3 Regular Pull-ups
3 Regular Pull-ups
As you can see the reps are kept low. That is because I am going for max strength in this workout, not for muscular endurance. What kind of warm ups do you do?
photo credit: walk on beach
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