Stop Warming Up and Lift Something Heavy, For Crying Out Loud!!
There’s a growing body of trainers and strength coaches who are starting to push the benefits of performing active mobilizations and dynamic warm-ups before training sessions in order to improve the physiological state of their clients and athletes and hopefully pump out some bigger numbers and reduce injuries. This is great, and believe me it plays a big part in how I program my clients, right from my joint replacement post-surgical clients up to my marathon race prep and firefighter clients. Mobility work and SMR is HUGE, Brah!!
It’s important, I GET that. But here’s what I don’t get. There seems to also be a sub-set of the population that thinks mobility work and SMR is the end-all be-all of everything ever included in fitness and athletic programming. Case in point. There used to be a trainer here who would take pretty much every client through their workouts consisting of unweighted lunges in each of the 360 degrees, overhead squats for a bazillion reps with an unweighted dowel, more shoulder stretches than the starter for the Toronto Blue Jays, then finish off with about 20-30 minutes of roller work. Sure, they felt like gumby when they left and they started to sweat lightly from all the body movement, but amazingly his clients would complain of never feeling like they got a workout in, and only a select few actually lost any weight.
While mobility and soft tissue work definitely have their place, they should be ingredients in the layer-cake of an awesome workout. Pretend its the eggs. At the end of the day, with only eggs, you have only eggs. While that’s not a bad thing in the big scheme of things, it’s pretty bad if I want some cake and you throw me a glass of eggs like Rocky. It’s gonna be pretty tough to choke down.
A workout should involve mobility and SMR in specific amounts based on the phase of training (pre-season, post-season, strength, cardio, etc.), status of the client (beginners need a little more mobility overall, athletes need more specific mobility, and SMR works best in muscles that get used often), and what phase of periodization they are in (build, crash or de-load). Aside from a de-load phase for an elite runner or a post-season program for a semi-professional athlete, there really isn’t a need for an entire workout to consist solely of mobility work and SMR. Eventually, you will have to load the body with some appreciable resistance, get the heart rate up, and get to work.
Now I’m not going to sit here and say that I know everything there is to know about athletic conditioning, but I have had the good fortune to work with a number of different athletes in various stages of development, in various sports (alpine skiing, basketball, track & field, baseball, fastball, volleyball, rugby, marathon/ultra-marathon, triathlon, cycling, olympic weight lifting, rowing, and speed skating to name a few). While mobility plays a huge role in their tissue health and recovery, about 95% of their training is devoted to their specific sport or goal activities. If they’re in the gym, they are moving iron or performing energy system development work, or building neuromuscular efficiency, and use mobility work as a warm-up. Roughly 5-15 minutes worth of it.
The average Jane and Joe, who spend the majority of their lives chained to a desk job, will definitely have some muscle stiffness and tightness as a result, but their main concern will not be how do I make it through today’s 8 hours of training and have something left for the rest of the week? Their main concerns are how do I get in some time to workout around my work schedule and family life? Spending an hour on mobility may be a good starting point, but it forgets to address the other necessary ingredients of fitness, such as lifting heavy shit, running really fast with a heart rate so high that it’s about to throw a valve, and telling everyone in the gym how much you can bench with your nipple-hanger tank top while posing on front of the mirrors by the water fountain.
Wait, that’s not just me who does that, is it? Well……..damn.
Case in point. I have a distance training client who has worked with a number of trainers in the past, some used a little active mobilization here and there, one never touched the stuff in favor of just lifting heavy things (amazingly, he saw his biggest strength gains when he lifted copious amounts of weight!!), and one who insisted on spending a half hour working on stretching every…..single…..muscle….in……..the…..body. Then rolling out every…..single…..muscle….in……..the…..body. Then spending the remaining 20-30 minutes preparing to do a heavy lift, which took all of 5 reps to do.
While I applaud the need to be cautious and ensure the body is properly warmed up, I would go so far as to say this level of obsession dedication may border on tapping your foot three times and spinning in one circle clockwise every time you got in the car, or spraying down the phone receiver with disinfectant every time you picked it up.
Do we need active mobilization and SMR work? Absolutely without question. Do we need to spend the entire hour working on it? Unless the person is recently injured, coming off the tail-end of a hard playoff series or long race, or if they’re in the middle of a de-load week, then I may consider it, but otherwise, get to the meat and potatoes of the workout. There should be no reason you’re not throwing around more plates than a dishwasher at Denny’s by the time 20 minutes rolls around.