Warming up is far from the most glamorous side of sport but it’s hugely important to getting the most out of workouts and avoiding injury.
As CrossFit covers such a wide range of movements, developing a comprehensive general warm-up can be challenging for both athletes and coaches.
Comparing your own habits with the best is always useful, so here is what five-time CrossFit Games athlete Josh Bridges uses as his regular warm-up routine, as shared on his YouTube channel.
1 - Foam Rolling
Bridges begins by foam rolling all major muscle groups.
2 - Bike 3 Mins
He then moves on to three minutes on the exercise bike
3 - Couch Stretch
Being prone to hip tightness, Bridges focuses on a couch stretch to loosen the hips and quads.
4 - Banded Lunge
A banded lunge helps activate the quads and hamstrings, and Bridges also takes care to stretch his adductors and other areas of the hip while in this position.
5 - Voodoo Floss
Bridges then wraps any sore or tender joints in a Voodoo Floss compression band and performs activation exercises for a couple of minutes.
6 - Shoulder Stretches
A resistance band is used for a range of shoulder stretches to help lubricate the joint and stretch all areas of the shoulder using rotations.
6 - Neck Stretch
A couple of brief moments are taken to gently stretch his neck with the resistance band after warming up his shoulders.
7 - Dynamic Stretches
This is where some more dynamic stretching starts to be used, such as walking lunges.
8 - Banded Presses
To get some final upper-body activation in, Bridges then performs some banded presses.
9 - Bike
Cardio is used to end the general phase of the warm-up. Bridges does a brief session of 5 calories hard, 5 calories easy for 50 calories.
10 - Specific Warm-Up
Just in case what came before didn’t quite do the job, Bridges then does some specific drills to warm-up for whatever session he has that day.
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