Aaron King (00:02):

Welcome back to the modern old school training podcast. I'm Aaron King join with coach Bob King as usual. And today we are talking about warming up. Well, specifically, we're gonna look at the dynamic warmup and what we call the buildup or lead up drills. So some things we'll talk touch on it. This one is a little bit about the differentiation between the kind of a static stretch, active stretch but really going into cooldown warmup. There are some differences based on the day, the theme and kind of what activity you're gonna do, and even speed versus weights, agility condition, you know, they're just all the places it fits, but kind of, I guess let's take a step back and just summarize just you maybe more specifically, what I just introed.

Coach Bob King (00:43):

Well, you, you covered a lot of things that can be summed up in preparation. You get your body warm and ready to do what it's going to do next. So for example, you've talked about a weightlifting warmup. We have that where you're doing movements that will help you with the movement of the weightlifting close to the body. And then right now,, from a science standpoint, we know that muscle and joints and tendons work better at a higher temperature. Now it's not like you're going from 98.6 to 112, but the point is it's, it's been dormant. You come out of the locker room or come out of the car, bus, whatever, and you've been sitting in an odd position. Your, you know, your arms and legs are bent. You've got to get up and get the muscle ready to endure stress. So what that means is we start moving around and doing basic movements that are fundamental across the board per sport are our warmups where we jog and skip and things of that nature.

Coach Bob King (01:36):

What that does, it gets the muscle awake for the movements that are coming up. Now, during that process, the dynamic warmup simply means we're taking the body through different ranges of motions that the angles of the joints will perform from there. That's a very kind of you know, pedestrian pace, as you, you might say, after that, we're going to go into what we call a lead-up in a lead-up as a transition. It fits right in between the warmup and the sports activity. So the war, the warmup takes you through, get you, get your body, moving a little heat going, then we take you to the lead-up. And now you're going to start going at a higher speed. You're going to start doing things that are relevant to your sport football players, going to sprint a soccer player is going to sprint basketball players, going to sprint probably changed direction more so, depending on what your sport is now that you've got warmed up, you can lead up to the, to the speed of the game. And so that lead up is so important in the transition from zero to a hundred, we can't do that. So we have to go 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and so forth to get to a hundred miles an hour.

Aaron King (02:41):

Right. And so when we go, when we go from those, I guess when you're doing program design there, there's kind of the different pieces. So you have just the basic warm, maybe jog for, you know, I like to jog for 10 minutes now, cause I'm trying to get more fitness in the back in the day. I did about four minutes, four-minute, either a lap around the track. Five minutes. Yeah. Sometimes just do like at a football camp or something like that, just a hundred yards back. So a couple of hundred yards just to get the body loose and then right into the dynamic warmup. So we'll do like the walking or the deep lines walking quad, just your, your basic stretches, your moving

Coach Bob King (03:13):

Stretching is that hybrid between static and just all-out running. Right? So you're, you're in motion. And as you said, you're doing all the different angles and approaching two different muscles so that you're able to get that muscle ready to respond. If a cold muscle is a recipe for disaster.

Aaron King (03:31):

Yeah. And so that, that kinda reminds me too, is the different seasons. I always tell guys, when we do this cancer program is we have to have this, this, we call it a woman and her kicking stuff was the daily method of operation. But really in any training, it's the same thing where it's saying, we're going to warm up jog, and then your dynamic starts. So you have your routine but then based on if it's summer if it's winter, whatever the temperature is, you can, you can fit the add and subtract.

Coach Bob King (03:56):

So you were in Dallas, Texas. And so as we get into June, July, our warmup shrinks, I mean, they warmed up walking across the parking lot. I mean, it's like, okay, you're warm, let's get going right to lead up. But now we'll shorten it a little bit because the, the principle is heat. That is it. And so we also know is another topic that he's a thief, so we don't want to overdo it. Every athlete is an individual. I've seen guys get up off the bench and go, and I'm like, cringing like dudes get a little bit more prepared. And some guys just like, are you going to ever get ready? So every athlete's different, but there are some parameters that you can use that will be safe as far as not pulling a muscle for everybody. And that's that, you know, three to five-minute jog and go into the dynamic warmup.

Coach Bob King (04:42):

And then you mentioned themes a minute ago. What we mean by themes is we're going to talk about all right, so I'm going to be soccer football a lot of straight ahead. And we're going to do drills that mimic that just simply running straight ahead, whether they're pushup starts or buildups, things of that nature, we do a power skip into a sprint, a basketball. You're going to do a more, you know, rotational kind of change the direction stuff. Cause when you change the direction, your hips and everything is turning quite a bit. And we have a big OCA series that we call it. So in our offseason training, we train in the warm-up and lead up by themes. So if we have a speed, like zero to 10, zero to 30 day, almost all the lead-up is going to be straight ahead on the change of direction, days, or combo days, we do the OCA series tapioca, skip YOKA Carioca, and so forth. And also just do some shuffling and side to side change direction, things like that. So we've, we warm up pretty much always the same. Then we will lead up based on the theme of training and those are reflected in our workout.

Aaron King (05:46):

Yeah. There's a couple of pieces in there that we haven't talked about yet again. And when we, we try to get as narrow as we can in each of these episodes to really focus on a lot of why, because when we give it just a workout plan, we people to know why you're doing it so that if you do need to make an adjustment, you can cause you're a little bit more educated and there are so many different ways to do things. But a couple of things that we didn't really, we haven't really talked, touched on in this first segment or part was one foam rollers. So softball and folk foam rollers. I personally use a PVC pipe. I have it somewhere in here. It's a, it's a beast. This is a PVC pipe. And I put a, we got some duct tape like this has got gaffers tape. This is like some film tape. So PVC pipes, my, my choice. But we also use a get the softball. And those are, those are just that's that myofascial tissue really getting it loose. If you can keep a softball, keep a small foam roller on you. That's something you need to do. I mean, a couple of times a day,

Coach Bob King (06:46):

The muscle is a funny tissue. It'll do what it wants to do. And if it's, if its muscles upset and it's been stressed or strained, you don't want to cramp or spasm you've got that foam roller and there's a lot of looking into it more about what, you know, what does that work so well? Well, it just does a, whether you want to call it trigger point massage, myofascial release, it works. So the tennis ball softball, the foam roller or PVC pipe, whatever your tolerance is are very, very effective as both a warm-up and cooling.

Aaron King (07:18):

Yeah. I liked that a lot, especially softball for like my, my feet and everything. Feet are important. Feet are very important. And so that can be done, you know, if you just arrived at the field or the gym or the gym, get ready to roll out. Afterward, I like to do it tonight. I just, it just keeps your body that soft tissue in a good, in a good place and then static stretch. So just sitting down doing a static stretch, now we've done it. It's kind of done all throughout, but here's when you're warming up for performance, dynamic stretch is more ideal.

Coach Bob King (07:49):

It just, gets you ready for it. You'll hear this a lot. I always say, get you ready for what you're going to do next. Okay. So are you getting ready to sprint? Well, you better be moving. Then, the one thing about a static stretch that I think you have to keep in mind is it's not invaluable. It's very valuable. They, they found out back in the old days that if you can sit and stretch for five to eight minutes after an activity, then you might be able to hold your range of motion better as the muscle cools down. At the same time, I noticed in the observational standpoint, when I work with athletes after ACL reconstruction, back before I was doing more of the hands-on reconditioning I always noticed that when I got, an ACL recovery from physical therapy, how much more range of motion their hamstrings had on the surgical site than the non-surgical side. And as, because the PTs were just working that surgery surgical side and really pushing the range of motion and flexibility. So static stretching has a place without a lot of heat and warms up. It might be insufficient to be thorough,

Aaron King (08:56):

Right. And so that's why it's, it fits so well at the end in your cool-down cause you know, you have this little, you stretch, you know, there are those little micro-tears. Yeah. Stretch, heels, stretch shield, and kind of the muscle lengthens over time. But that was something that I did that really helped me in my career. I was just stretching in general through high school and everything at night after my workouts, always on cooldown when you're done weightlifting anything. But yoga, I did a lot of yoga more in my professional career. I did that a couple of times a week and now yoga by itself is, you know if you like it not that's fine, but for me, it was a great way just for flexibility, for staying healthier. I thought it was, that was one thing that was very overkill and I was doing 90 minutes twice a week in the offseason.

Aaron King (09:40):

Bless you, my son. Right. And then during the season, you know, it's football season specifically and bobsledding was a little bit different cause it's just constant like lifting, but you know, I would have a massage once a week just to stay. There's always something mainly during, during, you know, in-season stuff where you're getting just car racks all day. But, but yoga was helpful, obviously keeping the roller and then this, this is kind of a, not, this is on topic, but kind of rotator cuff and the mini bands and all that stuff kind of used as a warmup tool.

Coach Bob King (10:13):

Oh no, no question about it. So, you know, we always talk about cuff and stuff because there's such a long list of stuff to do outside of the rotator cuff. And the thing about the rotator cuff in training weather, I don't care if you're weightlifting or throwing a ball or some implement the rotator cuff is the weak link in the chain. And so to give it some love and attention is important because it's extremely fragile over time. The rotator cuff is not something you want to have a problem with. So if you will treat it properly, it will treat you properly. And one thing you, you kind of were alluding to a minute ago with the yoga and things like that. If you will take the time to learn how to stretch and increase your range of motion. When during my martial arts days they put us through some really intense stretching. I mean it and I bring this up, not because of the martial arts experience, but there's a thing called PNF stretching or partner stretching. When you use a partner that can be a very valuable pool tool in the static stretching area. But if you're the guy being stretched or the girl being stretched, you are in control. So the partner can give you some pressure and stretch you where you think you can't go, but you also have to know when to say,

Aaron King (11:27):

Right? Yeah. And we used, that was part of our cool-down too when we do the recruiting camps is buddy stretch. But I always remind the guy that's pushing, you're going to switch here. So if you're going to get you back yeah, so yeah partner stretching is great, but he's stretched. And then, you know, we talked about that rotor, rotator cuff, but some of the mini bands, the walks and from what you hit on the hips and, you know, that's really where we try to get in the foam roller. And some of those when you cross your leg. But these, all these little tools, I think, I think one of the things that you see so much in training online and a lot of the content that's out there including us, you know, we're putting out content, but that is, it's not necessarily, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It, you know, I don't have to be a kettlebell guy. I don't have to be a band, a core guy. There's a place for everything. And just because there's a way to do many bands, you can still use it for other areas.

Coach Bob King (12:16):

If you will rotate stressors, I think you'll be better off if you get there's this whole adaptation thing, the weight, the reason you train is to adapt, to get stronger and do more. And so if you do the same thing over and over, you're like, this is this not working like it used to, you got used to it. So we rotate the stressors in our training. And when you talk about the mini band, the mini band is real, is are relative to the rotator cuff stuff, because of shoulder ball and socket, hip ball and socket. And so there's a whole bunch of little muscles down there. We always think quads, glutes, hamstrings underneath all that. It's a whole bunch of cast of characters that are working that needs some attention. So, you know, if you say you're only as strong as your weakest link, then you better strengthen those weaker links. So mentioning that the mini band rotator cuff is that I think a very good point.

Aaron King (13:05):

It was very important. All right. So if you have any questions, you know, we're always responding to things on YouTube. So, if you're on YouTube right now, watching this just message below. If you have any questions, comments, feedback, we want to hear it. We're gonna be doing more and more just going to try to get this out as much as we can, hopefully just once a week probably for now. But if you have any questions put in the comments below, you can tweet me @DeepSnap, hit me up on Instagram @DeepSnap coach Bob King @CoachBobKing on Twitter and Instagram, but that's all the time we have today talking about warmup, dynamic stretch, and the things you can do for that kind of, you don't want to call it injury, injury prevention, but really you're preventing certain injuries. Yeah. All right. Well, that's all for this time.