Anyone who’s trained athletes, or “weekend warriors” for that matter, knows how important warming up is. In my experience, many trainees have no clue how to warm-up properly, and as a result, either dismiss it entirely or haphazardly go through a general cookie-cutter routine. Think about it- how does peddling on a bike for ten minutes followed by your standard, ho-hum hamstring stretch that you hold for 30 seconds in one position prepare you for the more dynamic nature of resistance training/sprinting/etc?
In case you couldn’t pick up on the sarcasm, it doesn’t. Thankfully, in the past few years we’ve had a handful of great products, most notably Magnificent Mobility and Inside-Out, that introduced us to the concept of dynamic flexibility. Most recently however, I came across another great product which does a fantastic job at discussing the importance of the warm-up; The Parisi Warm-Up Method.
Both Martin Rooney and Bill Parisi do a fantastic job at outlying how and why going through a proper warm-up is crucial as far as preparing athletes for running, jumping, and change of direction that takes place on the playing field. Likewise, they also recognize that for the average person who has the mobility of a batting cage, going through a dedicated warm-up/dynamic flexibility routine works wonders as far as improving basic biomotor skills such as speed, strength, power, flexibility, endurance, muscular coordination, and joint stabilization. In short, warming up is kind of a big deal.
Stuff I Liked: Superb production value. Thorough desciption of all exercises with slow motion review, as well as key points to remember/coaching cues. No cheesy porn-style music either which was a bonus. As an added incentive, there’s a detailed 10-15 minute demonstration of the coaching staff from Parisi Speed School taking their athletes through the entire warm-up, which I found very helpful.
Stuff I Disliked: Other than Martin Rooney making me feel like a girly man (the guy is a brick shit-house), there wasn’t much I didn’t like about the video. I guess I could be nit-picky and say that some (and by some I mean like 1-2) of the exercises/movements they demonstrated were a bit out-dated given some of the recent research on spinal range of motion. But like I said, that’s just being anal and it’s not that big of a deal.
All in all, I thought this was an awesome product and would highly recommend it to anyone who trains athletes and/or people who take their health/performance seriously. Check it out here.
