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Dynamic Warm Up & Mobility Training Guide

Get The Right Start

We all know what a warm up is, at least some what. To some of us, its a quick 10 minute run on the treadmill, or a couple of basic stretches we learned in high school. Most people are under the assumption that the purpose of the warm up is to obviously… warm up. This is true, but your warm up should do much more for you than just raise your body temperature.

A good warm up should set you up to perform at your best by achieving 3 major goals. Those 3 goals are,

Movement Prep
Increase range of motion (ROM)
Muscular activation

Skipping this process leads to training with poor form which can prevent you from building muscle, gaining strength and ultimately lead to some pretty nasty injuries aka getting snapped up. You do NOT want to get snapped up because that can put you out of the gym for weeks and even months.

Let’s take a deep dive into the dynamic warm up phase and mobility training.

Intro To Dynamic Warm Up & Mobility

At the start of each workout should be exercises that prepare your body to perform the session’s exercises at an optimal level. For example, if you’re squatting, the dynamic warm up and mobility exercises should be specific to the muscles, joints, and movement patterns involved in the squat. The same rule applies to any other movements like pressing, rowing, deadlifting, etc.

Movement Prep

Movement prep is where you perform exercises that mimic the actual exercises you’re getting ready for. This primes your nervous system for that particular movement pattern. An example of this would be doing a body weight squat before doing squats with weight. This also allows you to see and feel your form and make any correction you need to before you get started.

Increase Range Of Motion

Increasing range of motion facilitates ease of movement and greater force production, which can also drastically reduce injury and increase muscular growth. For example, lengthening your hamstrings will get you a better deadlift which leads to strong thick hamstrings and glutes. Lengthening the muscle fibers of your chest will allow you to have greater movement at the shoulder blades, which in turn result in a bigger chest and back.

Muscular Activation

Any compound movement can feel very uncomfortable and lead to injuries over time if certain muscles aren’t firing like they’re supposed to. For example, having inactive glutes can lead to deadlifts being too stressful on the lower back and squats being too stressful on the knees. Inactive upper and mid back muscles can lead to shoulder injuries during bench pressing and shoulder pressing. These are the types of problems that are super common and you’re probably dealing with some of this yourself.

Squat Dynamic Warm Up

There’s a few things to consider when warming up for an exercise like the squat. Whether you’re squatting with a barbell, dumbbells, kettlebells, or even just body weight, the considerations are pretty much the same.

Hip and ankle mobility
Muscular activation of the glutes and quadriceps
Maintaining spinal extension

6 reps

12 reps per side

Deadlift Dynamic Warm Up

Deadlifts are all about maximizing the strength and efficiency of your hip hinge. Even though deadlifts require a full body effort, the glutes and hamstrings are the primary drivers. A few things to consider when warming up for this movement are,

Hip and hamstring mobility
Muscular activation of the glutes and lats
Maintaining spinal extension

8 reps

12 reps

12 reps per side

Shoulders & Chest Dynamic Warm Up

Warming up for an upper body workout pretty much works the same whether you’re pushing or pulling. The reason for this is the fact that both push and pulling both rely on the efficiency of movement at the shoulder complex. Pushing and pulling are separated into two categories, vertical and horizontal. You can prep for both of these at the same time. A few key consideration here are,

Mobility of the shoulders and scapula in all planes of motion
Muscular activation of all 3 shoulder heads, rotator cuff, and scapula muscles

12 reps

8 reps

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Exercise Selection And How To Make The Right Choices

Joint pain is one of the biggest struggles that people face today. This joint pain keeps people from being active and doing the things they love to do. It makes things like going up and down stairs a miserable experience. Throughout my 10+ years of experience, I’ve been able to help people to overcome and even completely fix joint pain. Let’s talk about the 3 steps to fix knee hip and lower back pain.

1. Massage

There are various forms of massage that work to relieve excess tension from muscle which in turn relieves joint pain. Check out some of the methods of massage below.

Professional Massage

This can be, deep tissue massage, hot stone massage, shiatsu, reflexology, etc. These are the most effect for fixing issues, but not very cost effective.

Self Myofascial Release

This is basically a technical way of saying self massage. This can be done with a foam roll, trigger point ball, or even your own hands. Its not as in depth and effective as professional massage, but needless to say its a lot more cost effective and very convenient.

*My recommendation is to apply self myofascial release daily before and after training and professional massage once a week.

Checkout my video on foam rolling.

2. Stretching

From my experience, joint pain is usually a case of poor mobility. An example of this would be tight hamstrings and calves limiting glute activation, which causes excess stress on the quadriceps that leads to knee pain.

My recommendation is to loosen up the muscle with self myofascial release before stretching. Checkout some of the stretching methods I’d recommend.

Active Isolated Stretching (AIS)

This stretch technique is held for only a few seconds at a time. Its performed for several repetitions, each time exceeding the previous point of resistance by a few degrees. Ideally this is performed for several sets with a specific number of repetitions.

Dynamic Stretching

This type of stretch is a series of continuous movement patterns that resemble fluid human movement. I personally tend to model my dynamic stretching drills after various yoga poses and martial arts techniques.

3, Strengthen

Weak or inactive muscles typically cause other muscles to work way more than they normally would, thus causing muscular imbalance. These muscular imbalances ultimately cause joint pain. In order to fix these imbalances you have to strengthen those lagging muscles.

After you’ve applied self myofascial release, AIS and dynamic stretching techniques, you can start strengthening lagging muscles. There are two main ways to do this.

Isolation Exercises

These types of exercises only require one or two joints action and the use of one or two muscles. This allows you to better focus on activating a lagging muscle. Examples of this would be a hip bridge, hamstring curl, standing calve raise, etc.

Compound Exercises

These types of exercises are compound movements that involve the flexion and extension of at least 3 joints. Compound exercises are great for maximizing strengthen and body mechanics through improving muscle synergy. In other words this is the best way to train to be strong and balanced.

Knee, hip, and lower back pain should all be fixed at the same time because they are all directly connected. Unhealthy knees ultimately lead to hip and lower back pain and vice versa.

Here are the main things to improve to fix joint pain.

Ankle mobility
Hip mobility
Spinal extension
Torso strength
Glute strength
Hamstring strength

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.