The Body Weight Warm Up

Warming up: no one really loves it, many of us skip it, and too often we half ass our way through a series of motions or climbing movements and call it good when in fact, we are not “good”. I’ve said for years that if you don’t have time to warm up, you don’t have time to train or climb. I stand by that, every time I exercise no matter what the days activities are going to be. The age old question though seems to be - What is the best way to warm up? How long do you warm up before trying hard? How can you tell if you’re warmed up?

The Body Weight Warm Up is a combination of body weight exercises that I’ve picked up over the years from a variety of sources. Some of these are climbing specific while others are geared more towards general movement preparation for activity. The combination of these six exercises takes about five minutes to complete and requires no equipment. Running through them once is good but running through them twice is a great warm up for any day of exercise whether that’s lifting heavy at the gym or cragging for the day. I’ve also included a quick secondary climbing warm up for those days at the bouldering gym at the end of the video.

But what are these exercises and how are they prepping us for activity? This video includes: Inchworms with Elbow Taps and Shoulder Openers - this combination exercise engages the hip hinge, some light pressing and abdominal core work, our hip flexors, hamstrings, and to top it off we get some nice thoracic rotation and shoulder extension, it has it all. Next is the Prying Squat which is really great for opening up our hip flexors, this is really applicable to highstepping and on the wall, open hip positions. The Side Lunge is another good climbing specific exercise that targets the whole leg and glute. It also helps to turn on our Proprioception and balance control. Large Arm Circles with Finger Extensions are old hat for most of us but still not to be missed. These encourage good blood flow into the arms and fingers as well as limbering up that ever critical shoulder joint. The finger extensions are particularly helpful on cold days at the crag or boulders. The Wall Slides target the stabilizing muscles around the Scapula and encourage good extension movement patterns, something most climbers need help with. Lastly the Tendon Glides are awesome for warming up our flexor tendons. While they might look a little silly (especially once you add the T-Rex arms in) these are one of the best ways to warm up our connective tissues (which receive very little blood flow).

Additionally you can add in the Volume V1 Warm Up to the end of these exercises as a secondary climbing focused warm up. The premise is simple, take your current maximum climbable V grade and climb that many V1 boulder problems. So for example if your current max bouldering grade is V4, climb four V1’s. Or if your current max grade is V10, climb ten V1’s. The volume is scaled to all abilities and it guarantees you’re getting in easy movement and not rushing too quickly to run through grades. I typically like to add in another climbing specific warm up afterwards just to be safe. That being said it’s always scalable to make sure the athletes are engaging to about the 50% intensity level.

Typically a well designed warm up lasting 10-15 minutes should be sufficient for any activity. Once we’re warm we have to be smart and have “2nd Tier” warm ups as well, doing this body weight warm up and then hopping on a V12 would be unwise. Try and make sure you’re also getting a similar stimulus to your days max efforts at 50-60% intensity before going for gold. If you’re taking longer than 10-15 minutes with basic movement prep and low intensity climbing (20-30% range) you’re just spinning your wheels. The combination of a low intensity warm up (20-30%) and a medium intensity secondary warm up (50-60%) is great for safely moving your body to prepare for near or max level intensity efforts.

The same principle applies for days outside! If your project is V9 and you can’t muster one or two problems of each grade up to V6 you probably should be working on your capacity and not your top end efforts. I see climbers all the time warm up on 5.10b, hang from a board or block for 30 seconds, and then jump straight onto 5.13+. I can’t think of the last time I saw someone warm up that way and then send, it rarely if ever happens. A well thought out warm up not only engages our muscles and soft tissues appropriately but it also engages our neuromuscular system which is vital for hard or max efforts. A handy trick I picked up from Tyler Nelson at Camp 4 Human Performance is after warming up, before a hard try on a route or boulder is to do a few “Pin Pulls” with a no-hang device. Simply sit down and loop the cord around your feet straight out in front of you. Then, grabbing the entire board (or big jugs) pull back as hard as you can for a few seconds and repeat. There’s excellent evidence that this opens up your “try hard gear” mentally, more so even than listening to the newest Taylor Swift album!

To sum up - Warm Up! Don’t skip it! Try this Body Weight Warm Up the next time you’re at the gym or crag before launching into those first few lifts or pitches. Your body will thank you in the long run.