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It’s easy to think of the warm-up as a throwaway part of your workout. It isn’t the sweatiest, most exciting place where you push your boundaries or max your gains. But the warm-up is where you set yourself up to make the most of your sessions. This is true for a flexibility workout just like resistance training, running, or anything else.
Warming up for flexibility is, in many ways, just the same as warming up for strength, power, or endurance. You still need to cover these primary areas:
Elevate your body temperature: As the name implies, a warm-up should make you warm! This means doing things that give you that hot, prickly feeling of increased temperature and blood flow. That can mean a light cardio session of 5-10 minutes doing fast walking, jogging, or calisthenics or it can mean some energetic core work. This is a generalized part of the warm up so as long as you feel a little sweaty and flushed afterwards, you are doing it right. The main thing is you have to move!
Get your connective tissue moving: If we have been still for a little while, like when we sleep, our connective tissue can get dehydrated and develop tiny little adhesions. Part of a warm up is moving through our available ranges to lubricate and mobilize the fascia. Usually this involves dynamic mobility movements that mimic the movements you will be doing in your workout.
Prime your muscles: You want to get your muscles, and the motor neurons that inspire them, primed for action. You want your brain and body to be communicating smoothly when attempting your most challenging movements; this means starting small and gradually increasing the range, speed, weight, and/or complexity so that by the time you are needing high performance, your brain and body are coordinated.
Get your head in the game: Workouts are far more likely to be productive, fun, and safe when we are mentally and emotionally present. With all the monkey business of life, sometimes it can be hard to leave everything else at the door, so part of the warm up is also the ritual of letting go of other concerns and bringing the focus onto the body. Some of the tools I like best to facilitate this are breath, avoiding watching videos while working out, and creating a routine that helps you bring you into a focused state.
Stretching is Almost Never Useful in a Warm-Up. Almost.
Up until the last 10-15 years most warm-ups included passive static stretching. It is still extremely common in recreational athletics and at the gym to see people stretching before a workout or game.
However, all of the new research shows that passive static stretching has a negative effect on the body’s ability to produce strength and power. This happens because the effectiveness of passive static stretching is the way it overrides the body’s stretch reflex—a reflexive contraction against fast or aggressive lengthening. That stretch reflex is necessary for us to produce maximum strength and power, so the two are always in opposition.
These days, fitness experts recommend saving passive static stretching either for the end of a workout or as its own stand-alone training session. Athletes and movers are advised to focus on dynamic and active ROM for warm-ups. These avoid the inhibition of the stretch reflex and help with that neuromuscular potentiation that we want in a warm-up. Fantastic! Unless…
When Some Passive Static Stretching Can Be Useful in a Warm-Up
Passive static stretching can be useful if you are warming up to do something that requires a lot of flexibility. Most of the studies I have read that discourage passive static stretching in a warm-up have studied activities that don’t require an extensive range of motion. If you are doing squats or playing soccer you don’t need an insane range of motion.
However for dancers, circus artists, martial artists, yogis, and others whose training requires an extreme range, some passive static stretching in the warm up may be necessary. The key is to make sure that you are finding the right balance between keeping enough strength and power for your movements and opening up all the ROM you need.
When designing a warm-up for a client, here are some questions I ask in order to find the balance:
How much range of motion is necessary for the training session? Do we need oversplit range or just some nice hamstring extension?
How much strength and power is necessary for the training session? If this is a contortion session then we need a lot of control, balance, and stability but not a lot of max strength and power. This is a different set of requirements than for someone warming up for acro or a dance class including leaps
Is this person naturally bendy or tight? I’m going to offer a very different warm-up for someone on the hypermobility/EDS spectrum than someone with dense, strong muscles and fascia. The warm-up should give you what your body needs the most
If you are doing passive static stretching, are you also incorporating other movements to make sure that you are still hitting the basic needs of a warm-up included above?
This is just one of the ways that training flexibility fitness—defined as activities that require both strength and an above-average range of motion—sometimes requires a deviation from the textbook fitness formats.
That said, I still see an overuse of passive static stretching in warm-ups even from circus and dance folks. It is nice and relaxing to sit in a split for a few minutes instead of getting sweaty and activated, but you may not be making the most of your precious training time.
Want to go deeper?
Further reading:
Does Passive Static Stretching Work to Relax Chronically Tight Muscles? — the full science on how passive static stretching works
Strong AND Flexible: Understanding End-Range Strengthening — the active flexibility work that should replace it
What Causes Tight Muscles? — understanding what's actually happening in your body before you stretch
Does Getting Older Make You Less Flexible? — how age affects your connective tissue and warm-up needs
See it in action
Reading about warm-up principles is one thing — actually doing them is another. Try a free month of flexibility video workouts and see how a properly structured warm-up changes your training sessions.
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This November I'm co-teaching a week-long retreat in Oaxaca, Mexico for women and femmes over 45 who refuse to let age and societal BS stop us from being badass movers. Find out more about the retreat.
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Happy Bendings,
Kristina
