Warm-Up Routine Of A CrossFit Games Athlete

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.