So how to perform a warm up correctly, well a good warm up consist of about 5 minutes of a good steady pace cardiovascular activity such as a rowing machine, jogging, recumbent bike, or elliptical. Any of those activities will suite you just fine and I’m sure you’re already wondering what is the reason for doing five minutes of a cardio activity. Well the reason for engaging in a cardiovascular activity is to increase the core temperature of the body. In doing this, you will stimulate your heart and lungs and lubricate your joints as well because there will be an increase of secretion of synovial fluid. As you’re warming up your core doing your 5 minutes of cardio, I want you to get your mind mentally prepared for the weights you will battle that lies ahead of you. It’s highly important to have a 100% focused mind on anything your trying to accomplish because it will only greatly benefit you and contributes to give that 110% effort which is one of the main keys that is needed to put forth that intensity that plays a vital role in the success of your workout. So once your 5 minutes is complete, the next component of your warm up will be the final section of this process.

So now that your core is all warmed up and you have your heart rate up, your blood is flowing, the oxygen to your lungs is pumping. Now you’re all already to begin your five warm up sets. You may be thinking to yourself, that’s ridiculous and way to many sets of a warm up and that’s the whole workout in itself. If you’re one of those people who believe this, you’re wrong. Like I’ve been saying, a proper warm up is very important and very crucial to do, so do not not skip out on this because you will only be loosing the benefit for yourself.

Your 5 warm up sets are very easy compared to your actual workout. These 5 warm up sets are utilized with only 50% and 60% of the weight that you would perform during your actual workout. Now if I were going to perform a flat bench press for the first exercise in my routine, then the flat bench press would be the exercise I perform to begin my 5 warm up sets. Now how to start out your 5 sets for a warm up is rather simple. First I will tell you that for any warm up or your actual workout, the first exercise must be a compound lift! For an example: lets say I’m going to flat bench press 200lbs for the first exercise in my actual workout, then to start out my five warm up sets, I would subtract 50% away from 200 which leaves me with 100. So 100lbs would be the warm up set I would perform. The math for this equation is very simple so don’t be intimidated.