Signal Before Noise: The lost art of warming up

I intentionally left prescribed warm-ups out of The Space Program originally for a simple reason: the way one should prepare for a hard effort is too complex to generalize and too important to get wrong. Some might see this as a sign that I don’t think warming up is crucial. It’s quite the opposite.

In our daily practice, we spend the majority of the session preparing the athlete. We brief them on mindset, sensation, and psychological strategy. We prime the tissues and instill the importance of attention and intention. Our primary job is done before what most would call “the meat” of the workout even begins. The real work is in the preparation.

Most people believe the magic happens in the throes of a truly intense effort. They are wrong. Yes, intensity is a necessary ingredient for improvement, but progress is not forged in the fire itself. Progress is born at the crossroads of intentional action and self-conflict, with most of the crucial work happening before the conflict begins. It requires performing repetitions in a highly conscious state and is directly correlated with the quality of your attention. This adaptation is then solidified only during the unsung, subconscious waves of sleep.

So, what is a warm-up? Moving around, getting some blood flowing, and elevating your heart rate should be mere side effects of what the mind is doing: constructing a mental checklist, assessing the system, and listening to feedback. This is impossible if your awareness is split, focused on bullshitting with your training partner or caught in a deep internal negotiation of “quit versus don’t quit.”

How do you do this?

Attention.

Lots of attention.

The warm-up is about learning to pay attention. It is a practice in holding that attention or, just as importantly, holding yourself accountable when you fail to do so.

I get countless questions about how to make progress or avoid injury, and my answers always revolve around a single question: What are you not aware of? I don’t know the exact reason one person struggles to achieve their goals while another cannot seem to avoid chronic injury, but I know it is highly correlated with a lack of attention.

Next time you train, try an experiment. Pay attention to how much you can pay attention. What are you actually thinking about during your warm-up? If your progress has stagnated or you can’t seem to recover from injuries, try this: double your warm-up time and cut the volume of your main workout in half. Focus entirely on the quality of your focus.

When you truly master the art of priming your system, it will be hard to tell where the warm-up ends and the workout begins. The entire session will become a seamless practice in attention. Once you see the progress that can be made by narrowing your focus this way, you will realize there is no other way to train.