Athlete • Speaker • Guide 
Athlete • Speaker • Guide Date: 27th April 2012
A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook about his inability to really get going during his workouts until halfway through them. He was doing a classical strength-training warmup called the Rippetoe warmup. Now, Mark Rippetoe is a bad-ass, and if I ever want to be a better strength athlete I will go see him. I hope to go take one of his seminars one day regardless. And his warmup is great for really motivated athletes focused on his variety of strength training, and I mean no disrespect when I say that his workout is deadly boring for most people. My friend wrote something to the effect of, “Why does it feel lousy to lift until the third set or so?”
I replied, “Here’s the Gadd Warmup: Drink more coffee, play louder music, jump up and down while thinking angry thoughts, throw a medicine ball against the wall a 20 times and run to pick it up while contemplating your high-school sweetheart’s infidelity or the people who can’t empty their pockets for airport security, scream a couple of times, and then lift the god dang bar. Works for me. Point is that all this foofy “warming up” often doesn’t get your mind or body really going to actually DO the workout. The Rip warmup was so boring I did it once a week or so ago and just woke up yesterday. Anyway, you gotta get the sludge in your veins and mind actually MOVING. Mostly joking above, sort of.”
I think a lot of how we perform during any athletic event is in our heads. We don’t “warm up” before a street fight or when we have to run from a piano falling out the sky; we produce enough adrenaline and other fun substances immediately that the idea is laughable. But when we workout we often don’t get the fun chemicals until we hit some sort of level of excitement, or get enough chemicals to hit a decent level of excitement. So I think a big part of warming up should actually be focused on getting into a solid mental state to perform well physically… And that mental state will look different for people lifting weights vs. climbing on a rope vs. bouldering. And it will be a different mental state for the type of workout too. One mental state or one warmup does not fit all situations. If you’re going to go for max squats then 20 minutes of rowing is just going to mess you up… Doing Rippetoe’s workout with a bunch of guys while listening to death metal and heckling each other? That’s probably going to work pretty well… Same with bouldering; a bunch of aerobic work before giving it anaerobically does not work well, I know this. Some range of motion exercises, some easy problems, and then boom, do it. Roped climbing? A good deep pump with some climbing that makes me physically and mentally have to try a bit and be uncomfortable, then 30 minutes of rest, game on. But I have seen people climb at their absolute best with no warmup other than walking to the crag for ten minutes on flat ground… Doesn’t work for me in general, but there’s a big variety in what works to warm up well” well.”
The bigger point here is to examine how we warmup, and ask what we want out of it. This will vary from day to day; if I’m tired and sore from a long flight and an early morning start then I will gently row for ten minutes, do a bit of stretching, and then decide if I even want to do the warmup. Usually I do by then, but if did 20 air squats and a few pull-ups I’d probably just leave. But on other days I’ve been active a ton already, so a few air squats, a few mobility exercises, and it’s go time. So you have to actually do some work and figure out what WORKS for your head and body. I read these endless articles about blood flow and oxygen levels etc, but they are generally written by people who studied sedentary, broke, semi-homeless people who hadn’t worked out in months. That’s actually insulting to homeless people, they at least get out and walk just to survive far more than the average human. Anyhow, point is that “scientific” workouts may be valid for scientific responses in a lab, but as always it’s PERFORMANCE that actually matters, and specifically your performance. Some people want to be told what to do, and that’s a decent starting point for sure. But ultimately you have to figure out what works for you as far as diet, training, life, sex, whatever. The templates are just that.
Finally, we often can’t control the competition or “real” workout environment (nor should we want or expect to), but training is different. I like to organize my training environment to make it fun for me. I often have to replace the music at my local climbing gym because it sucks (there are about 50 good techno tracks ever produced, the rest is just re-hashed disco. None of those good tracks are on the digital media player at my gym), and sucky music does not work for me when I’m training. I’d rather have silence than Bob Marley, Blur, or lame techno. I try to train when there are other motivated people to train with, or no one. Training with a lot of people who want to sit on their Lu Lu Lemon asses is a waste of time; the youth team where I train goes hard, I like to be around their energy and often overlap my own training schedules with theirs. It’s all about finding out what works for YOU.
Time to go train.
Posted in: Blog
Thanks, Coach, for the more involved answer. What I really said is “why do I feel like I’m gonna die when I lift the bar out of the rack for the first warm-up set?” And I think you’re right about the chemicals not being available. When I first lift the bar, it *hurts*, *really hurts* and is *scary*, *really scary.* This last time, I actually replaced the bar thinking I had loaded it wrong. I lift the bar and I think, “I can’t do this.” And then I do and by the third set of the warm up, it’s easy. It’s still heavy, but it “feels” easy. It’s gotta be that the adrenaline is going. Fight/flight has been initiated and I’m in full fight mode. The fear turns into fun. It happens everytime. But for some reason I’m surprized by it – everytime.
Interesting stuff for sure. Last Fall I built a 8’x8′ system wall in my apartment. After the initial “I finally have a wall in the house” feeling, I found it hard to motivate and sometimes really hard to get in the groove and have a good work out. So I changed my warm ups, sometimes stretching, sometimes talking the dog around the block, other times I’d go out front and shovel snow from one side of the side walk to the other. If I was training with ice tools, I’d climb for a bit just using my hands and visa versa. Turned out working really well. I’m big on the music too, our local gym is just how you described, I’m glad I have headphones.
Do you have any pictures of people doing this workout?
Nice article until I got to the last paragraph about music. How about I never dj again at the local climbing gym.
You do not like the fucken music then load up the mp3 player there with your fav music.
Maybe that was an opinion to keep to yourself!
Hopefully you would be playing some hardcore dubstep because here in Squamish the young TRAD climbers love it.
And they crank real hard!!
Maybe you should come hang out in the gym in Squamish!
Hevy Duty
Good one Will! We like it too when you train with our team… mutual energy feeding!
Yep warm up is a very variable subject. I have witness Adam Ondra do few pull up and couple of moves before he perform his semi-final and final at Youth World Championship. And both time he top his routes. It is not given to everyone to perform at your best out of the coach.
My input on this is a warm up routine may be flexible and adaptable. But it should have the same routine where it light up your fire! And then go all in!
Oh yeah about the music, like other grocery store The Vsion do have a numbers of tracks that keep playing on the random mode. With this said, we are a climbing gym with in mind to get you psyched so you are all welcome to plug on your MP3 and play something that satisfy everyone.
lol Will – I hear ya on the music factor. Lately at my local gym we’ve had to suffer through a lot of meatloaf, abba, and worst of all, radiohead! How someone working at a climbing gym thinks these are appropriate for climbing is beyond me.
Personally I find a hiphop beat (break beat) is the best, because has a flow that really works with climbing movement.
You will like the tunes we play in Squamish Monty!
Maybe you shouldn’t be a little ———- and get ass hurt about someone saying how your shitty music is shitty. Techno is for scrawny, druggy ——– who are to stupid to enjoy real music.
Yup, always bring my mp3 player. Techno beats all the time gets real old real fast.
Get a drum set, play drums to loud music for twenty minutes. WIll be ready for anything after that. May not even need the coffee. Actual talent for playing the drums not needed.
At least a few techno suggestions should be posted…
Interesting read. Thanks! Am also curious what those 50 top techno tracks are! Could I possibly suggest http://www.sharemyplaylists.com if any of them are on Spotify at all? 
Dung, the Vsion rocks no matter what is playing. I climb in gyms all over the world but am always happy to come home to the Vsion and its motivated scene.
For me warming up has nothing to do with mental state. It is all about injury avoidance. There are definitely times when I can jump on my project cold and send it, but the risk of tweaking something is a lot higher than if I spend 15 minutes getting my muscles warm and loose. Just as in your piano falling or street fighting example: yes you don’t warm up for those things, but your body will also sacrifice your muscles to make sure you don’t get hit by the falling piano. Just like a mom lifting a car off of her kid: she can do it without warming up because she’s got the adrenaline and the mental state, but her muscles are going to be a wreck afterwards. Maybe you hit a stage of physical fitness where warming up just doesn’t matter to injury, but I’m definitely not there yet.
Chris… You are an awesome DJ and its rad when you play at the V’sion. Everyone I talk to gets hyped when you are there.
In terms of tunes… to each their own. I see 10 year olds crushing in the V’sion, never complaining about play lists or tunes because they have likely not built a do or die ‘taste’ in music yet, unlike us old crabby folk cranking on our moderate routes.
I see some folks in there singing along to Bryan Adams and Cold Play, not my choice but hey… Motivation should come from internal drive and not external drive.
I think is hilarious when I see people pulling down with I Pods at a crag… but then again they are often climbing 5 Hard and I am pulling down on 5 moderate to easy 
Climbing in the Rockies always serves you with a good warm up hike, that’s why it’s awesome!
WG… always mega motivating.. thanks!
Sport climbers drinking red bull commenting on Lulu Lemon and music.. hahha
Now you just made it public.
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