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Originally Posted by wogihao  I dont understand how doing a non-spesific cardio activity that expends energy within the muscles helps in the performance of a weight training exerise.
Wouldnt it be better to do a light warmup of high repititions that prepaired the body for the exersise that you were about to do? wouldnt that triger the same responce with adreniline/hormones that you get with the cardio warmup but also help reinforce the nerological pathways conected with the exersise?
If Mentzer was wrong about the carido warmups then do you dissagree with his other clames?
I apreciate that many top sportsman do cardio as warmup but then in the past they also purged themselves and took enimea's before a big match. |
The warm up of light reps would expend far more localised glycogen than light CV mate. e.g. those light warm up sets on bench press will directly use glycogen in the pecs. Glycogen is the specific fuel for weights. Other fuels will be burned during a CV/whole body warm up and will not be derived from pecs. Only long duration CV will compromise energy available for your weights.
Tell you what is outdated and ineffective is the 3 warm up sets of light weight theory. This does pre fatigue the muscle and reduces strength during working sets. It only has an application in pre exhaust type training.
Proper warm up=
Short, light cardio to bring about shunting of blood to all skeletal muscles (you dont have to work the ones being trained to increase flow to them) and increase temp in general.
At this point muscles are ready but the nervous system needs a little prep to get it ready to bring about maximal contractions.
Warm up sets with low reps (not endless high reps) to prepare nervous activity and maxmise fibre recruitment (eg I do 3 sets of 2-3 reps building to my max weight).
Talk to the powerlifters and low rep warm ups is what they'll do.
I used to be guilty just as everyone of not warming up. I'd walk into the gym do one warm up set of 20 reps with little to no weight then get bang into my heavy sets. I noticed it took a while however for everything to feel smooth and fluid. Big sign that I wasnt warmed up right. The diffference is really noticable when your warmed up properly.