Do you really need to warmup?

Sounds strange, I know!

First thing to realize is that if it's taking you a long time to feel prepared enough to exercise, there are some underlying metabolic factors involved.

This is not ok!

Regardless of what our fitness culture has taught us, humans are designed to kick ass immediately when called upon.

When we are children, we understand this. Going from walking to sprinting to jumping or climbing is no big deal.

But as we get older, we decide to take it easy and work our way up to things.

And that's exactly what we end up teaching our brain that it needs to do.

Now obviously, we must use caution when building back the resilience and readiness to jump into exercise without much prep time.

And, you still can't overstate the importance of a good warm up for competitive athletes.

But, dependence on your warm up is unrealistic.

Life doesn't give us a warm up.

The faster you can go from zero to one hundred, the better.

It's a trainable skill that is appropriate for many athletes to practice.

I teach it to all my fitness clients and progressively shorten their warm up over time.

Here's my first hint...

If your warm up starts with laying on the floor doing something, you are already taking too long.

Training is meant to prepare us.

Especially for when we don't know what's coming.

About the Author:

Taylor Kruse, recently featured in Men's Health, is dedicated to empowering you with the truth and tools for improved health and performance.

His inspiration stems from more than 10 years of education and coaching through systems like Zhealth Performance, The Burdenko Method, and various movement practices.