Working out and warming up: Warming up is working out :-)

When I first started working out “for real,” I wasn’t much into warmups and light sets. The way I figured it was, if I wanted to move a lot of weight, I really needed to hop right to it, before I wore myself out.

This, of course, led to injury upon injury. Eventually I wised up and started to at least warm up before I began my workouts, if only to get my forearms moving around a bit and be generally more limber. However, this didn’t mean that I actually did “warmup sets” or anything, I was still jumping straight to my heavy weight sets right after a few times of going through the motions.

Earlier this year – between an illness or four – I started a new program at the behest of a friend: the “Bill Star 5x5 routine.” The routine was working for me for the most part, save for my arms which managed to lose a little bit of size during the stint, which I attribute to the nature of the beast; it seems it’s more a routine thats focus is the core, not the extremities. However, the thing that sticks with me the most is the work-up mentality of it. You start low, and work to your highest weight, at the last set. I was skeptical at first, but I have to admit that I was able to work my weights up rather steadily using this method.

Which is basically a “warmup” method of working out.

I think a lot. I think a lot about what would be at-the-time very out of place things. Like when I’m walking around at work, I am feeling my muscles work and contemplating the efficacy of things like workout routines. And it has begun to make a lot of sense to me, that warming up makes me a better… well I don’t know that I’d call myself a bodybuilder – I’m a skinny twit with just the inklings of decent form factor – but yeah, for lack of a better term right now, a bodybuilder. Because it makes me more alert. Not just in mind, but in body. Get the blood really going there, work up to the heavy stuff, and when I get there, I’m as loaded with blood and energy at the spot I need them as I’ll ever be.

I’m dumping the whole Bill Starr thing right now. Not because it hasn’t proven effective, but because it’s not allowed my arms to keep pace, which is important to me. I think I’ll cycle back to it or at least to something similar, but regardless, I do plan on taking the experience of the work-UP philosophy with me to other routines.

I’m hoping it will help me grow my arms & shoulders faster than I ever have. We’ll have to wait & see, though.