Is Muscle Activation a Myth?

Around ten years ago this idea became popular that you must activate muscles prior to starting an activity, especially muscles that would be considered weak. In the last couple of years however, it’s come out that this isn’t really true. Muscles are either strong or they aren’t, there’s really no benefit to “turning muscles on” when they are still weak afterwards. A common example that I have heard almost endlessly would be: your glutes aren’t working, we need to “activate” them. And the next step would be to do some glute bridges or band resisted side-steps to, theoretically, turn on that muscle group.

The goal of this blog post is to talk about this idea of warming-up the body vs activating muscles vs strengthening muscles, and how I approach this today. 

Ten years ago, muscle activation was a cutting edge practice, so I adopted it as well because the information presented at the time made sense to me. Again, and especially at the time, the most common muscle group that seemingly always needed to be activated would be the glutes, with trainers and strength coaches and personal trainers alike all saying they need to be “turned on” to protect against knee injury. 

At that time we would do lots activation drills in our dynamic warmup, which is one of the things I’ve changed my mind on a bit. I don't at all believe that we are mitigating injury risk in that moment by “activating” the glutes. The muscles are just weak, and it will take time to build the strength in those muscles to actually reduce the risk for injury. 

It’s a lot easier to say that someone got hurt because they didn’t “activate” their glutes, instead of telling the truth and saying the athlete is just weak in that area. The real solution is to continue to lift weights and get stronger. That's not the solution that people want to hear, because it's not a quick fix. Long term solutions are not nearly as popular as short term ones, but you have to actually get into a long term strength training program to get permanently stronger to have the best chance of staying injury free. 

However, I'm not sure you would see a massive difference in my written warm-ups between then and now. That's what's interesting about this. The thing that has changed is the mental side, or what I'm actually saying to my players. Instead of saying we are “activating” muscles, I say that we are just getting extra reps to warm-up. I will put in glute bridges of all kinds and add in monster walks to every pre-practice warm-up. But not because I’m activating a muscle, but because these are things that make the players feel good, and they are helping strengthen those muscles. It's the extra reps that are slowly playing their part in strengthening the hips. During the season when I’m trying to strike the best possible minimum effective dose (i.e., we don’t do one rep more than needed) and a frequent game schedule, this may be the only way we are able to train these muscles, as big lifts are few and far between in-season.

For me, everything always comes back to strength. Muscles don’t need to be “activated”, they need to be strengthened. A funny thing I’ve seen over the years is that when younger coaches look at “old school” training programs prioritizing squatting, deadlifting, and lunging, they are surprised at how simple they are. They think this can’t be everything, am I missing a page? 

But there's not, it just always comes back to the fundamentals. Strength is the base and that’s what I prioritize. I’m always looking for new things to add in to help build that base of strength, but the longer I do this the more I realize that it’s about getting stronger in very basic fundamental exercises. Athlete longevity and success, I firmly believe, is about being strong and having great technique.

This whole thing reminds me of the dramatic shifts that occur in science and medicine in relatively short time periods. When I was growing up, the idea was that you were supposed to put infants on their stomachs to sleep (because if they slept on their backs they might die). By the time that I had kids, it was the exact opposite, now they were supposed to sleep on their backs (because if they sleep on their stomachs they might die!). It only took 20-30 years to completely change the idea of how an infant is supposed to sleep. And this isn’t about the semantics or intention of activating or strengthening a muscle, this is about actual life and death!

So when we come to strength training and exercise science, you must use the common sense that comes with experience because the field itself is so young. That’s as a coach or as an athlete. Athletes have a pretty good sense of what is good or bad for them and what will or won’t work for them. 

The point is that even if you’re completely new or have a ton of experience, still listen to new ideas, but think about them before you take them as law. The biggest mistake is to just completely listen to someone, without remembering that the field is very new, and it’s changing all the time. This is why the main thing that changed about my warmups is my understanding of what we're doing and why. The methods used are still fairly similar, but the intention has shifted.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT

Reasonable Warm-ups

In the case of warm ups and stretching, you need to have an idea of what is appropriate for the situation for which you are warming up or stretching. Different stretching/warm-ups are used whether an athlete is prepping or recovering from an activity. 

But do not forget that every athlete’s body is different, some need more stretching/warm-up time than others. However, if it’s much more than others (in the same group or team) this is may be a good indicator that something is wrong and the body is not ready for normal activity. 

I’ve seen players “need” nearly an hour warm-up BEFORE they get to my dynamic warmup that I give them. That’s an excessive amount of time! Needing this amount of time is typically an indicator of poor recovery, poor strength, and poor balance within the body in some way. 

But, if the athlete is requesting this, then that’s what they need to feel ready. As we all know, sometimes it is the mind that needs the ramp up time. 

Generally, I’d say this type of example is of an athlete with poor recovery and balance, and will often manifest itself with everything feeling tight. If this is the case, a separate stretching workout should be done the night before or in the morning before the practice time frame begins.

However it gets done, that amount of stretching that will take 45-75 minutes should not be a part of the practice time period. If you (or an athlete you know) need that level of warming up and stretching, you’ve got to get that on your own time. You also need to understand that there likely are other issues at play that need to be identified and strategized around if that has not already been done. Again, constant tightness is often the manifestation of other issues.

A normal warm-up period will be 10-20-min for most ball sports while track athletes may take 30-minutes or more. Keep in mind track athletes are a different kind of athlete with very specific physical requirements. 

With this we are looking at different shades of preparation and different shades of athletes and that does matter as well. So bottom line, don’t waste your time on a long warm-up when the reality is, the need for a lengthy warm-up may be caused by some other factors that need to be dealt with in other parts of an athlete’s training day.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT

Add this to your warmup ASAP

Have you ever spent 10-minutes thoroughly warming up your entire system: mind, body, and even soul only to still feel deflated as you walk over to the barbell to start your workout?

You're not along. Often we get so wrapped up in increasing blood flow, mobilizing joints, and carrying out our injury prevention protocol, that one of the most important components of the warmup gets swept under the rug.

CNS Activation

I think we can all agree the central nervous system is truly the foundation of any training session - without its responsiveness not much is getting done. But does it have degrees of responsiveness? Degrees of readiness? Or is the nervous system always ready to fire at 100% efficiency and effectiveness? 

Exciting the Central Nervous System is a crucial final component to anyone's warm-up. It turns out, the CNS is NOT always ready to go and needs some "priming" of its own.

A bit of proper CNS activation is the final step to warming up that will allow the athlete to feel ready to go - reactive, fast, excited. 

How to:

Any gentle rotational work, builder sprints, light plyometrics will do the trick. The key is to do a couple of sets of 3-5 reps and allow the body to build from about 70% effort to 90% or so. It is key to adjust effort based on how the athlete is feeling on that particular day. If the athlete can't get through this part and "wake up" you should take note as it is a sign the body is not be ready to train that day... but that's another topic.

Upper Body Days - my favorite way to get ready for an upper body training day is to finish my warm-up with a light medicine ball circuit. I tailor effort to how I'm feeling. Sometimes the throws stay fairly light and fast, while other times I end up close to 100% effort by the last couple of reps.

Lower Body Days - Box jumps are my favorite to prime for a deadlift or squat day. You can minimize the impact from landing quite a bit and that helps this feel easier on the body while still doing its job to fire up the CNS. Another great option are very small hops/jumps: side-to-side, front-to-back, and single leg hops are all great options.

Give your CNS some love the next time you warmup and see if you feel your readiness to perform on the field, court, or gym changes.

How to Write a Warm-Up for Strength Training

Walk into any commercial gym and here are the various warm-ups folks execute: -       Swing the arms back and forth

-       Quad stretches

-      What warm-up?

What if you could enhance your workouts, prevent injuries, and perhaps strike up a conversation with that cute guy or girl in just 10 minutes? (Well, no promises on that last one.)  The easy, albeit not-so-sexy, answer is: perform a dynamic warm-up! I get it, warm-ups are boring and unimpressive, but when done right, can go a long way to increasing the benefits of strength training and extending your lifting career.

What’s the point of performing a dynamic warm-up anyway?

1. Increase bodytemperature- cold muscles, joints, and ligaments are more likely to get angry and sustain an injury.
2. Prepare the body for movement, part 1- especially if you fly a desk all day long, the joints are probably a little gunky. Warm-ups help restore range of motion (link for temp loss of ROM) lost during periods of lack of motion.
3. Prepare body for movement, part 2- exercises employed in warm-ups can help “groove” the nervous system for certain movements, making the body more efficient, which in turn allows it to hoist heavier weights. For example, a quadruped rock can prime the nervous system for hip hinging or squatting patterns.
4. Activate dormant muscles- along the same lines as point #2, prolonged positions (i.e. sitting) can reduce the function or certain muscle groups, either through changes in muscle length or tension. A classic example is, prolonged sitting tends to shut down the glutes and tighten the hip flexors.; supremely unhelpful when trying to deadlift massive loads from the floor. If you want the maximum benefit, you need the muscles turned on!
5. iYou look like a Jedi- true story: the first time I saw someone going through a dynamic warm-up (my to-be husband actually) I thought he was doing tai chi or some other marital art thingamabob.

Right, so you’re convinced you need to have a dynamic warm up before hitting the weights, but what do you do?

Let’s think in *very* general terms, everyone needs:

Correct breathing mechanics

Hip mobility

Glute activation

Thoracic spine (T-spine) mobility

Core stability

CNS (central nervous system) activation

Granted, depending on sport played, injury considerations, and whether or not you have laxity, the specific needs for each individual will be different. However, I’ve found that if you include exercises that encompass those components, you’ve got a pretty solid warm-up that will take care of 90% of the demands for general fitness preparation.

Here are some sample exercises geared toward the above mentioned characteristics:

90/90 Breathing

What it’s good for: breathing mechanics. This is a good beginner breathing drill if you or your client is having a hard time attaining 360-degree expansion of the diaphragm and rib cage.

I’m not going to delve into breathing today but if you want to know more (and you absolutely DO want to know more) you can read a few posts HERE and HERE (Also, indirectly, improving breathing mechanics will improve both t-spine and hip mobility.)

Crocodile Breathing

What it’s good for: breathing mechanics. Another good beginner drill as the floor provides tangible feedback for expansion.

Bulldog Hip Mobility

What it’s good for: hip mobility and core stability and a wee-bit of glute activation. Maintain a neutral spine and relatively stable hips as the knee moves around for maximum benefit.

Adductor Rockbacks

What it’s good for: hip mobility. Specifically this helps work out some of the gunk the adductors accumulate. If you don’t know what I mean, try a few rockbacks and you’ll instantly know where your adductors are. These bad boys are the “groin” in groin pulls and knotty, nasty adductors are more susceptible to pulls. Keep ‘em happy by rocking!

Half-Kneeling Hip Flexor Mob

What it’s good for: hip mobility and (indirectly) glute activation. This one, as the name implies, targets the hip flexors (front of the hip). Tight hip flexors can wreck havoc on pelvic position- which can set you up for back injuries or hamstring pulls- and, delightfully, shut down glute function through a process called reciprocal inhibition. Considering that most athletic endeavors require high-functioning glutes, this is a problem.

Glute Bridge

What it’s good for: glute activation. Wake up your sleepy glutes!

Quadruped Rockback

What it’s good for: hip mobility, core stability, CNS activation. Primarily, at SAPT, we use this to groove the hip hinge and teach neutral spine while moving. It also tells us if someone can squat to parallel or not by how their spine and hips move. Read more about that HERE.

Bird Dog

What it’s good for: glute activation, core stability, CNS activation.  Try to maintain a neutral spine and pretend you have to balance a glass of water on your butt. You’ll feel it in the right places. The cross-body movement (opposite arm and leg moving) fires up the CNS and solidifies coordination between the brain’s two hemispheres.

Spiderman with Overhead Reach

What it’s good for: hip and T-spine mobility. This hit everything and feels amazing. Make sure you follow your hand with your head so the neck isn’t cranked around.

Bear Crawl

What it’s good for: core stability and CNS activation. Similar to the bird dog, by maintaining a neutral spine and level hips, the core muscles have to fire and the brain has to coordinate the cross-body limb movement. (Technically, there’s a some glute action in there as they come in to stabilize the hips laterally.)

Yoga Pushup to T-Rotation

What it’s good for: All of the above. If you’re very limited on time, this is a great all-around movement to hit everything in one swoop. As a bonus, it grooves the pushup technique and encourages scapular movement- which is often non-existent in most people.

Stepback Lunge with Over-The-Shoulder Reach

What it’s good for: all of the above.  Plus, you’ll look like one cool cat doing this one.

Walking SL RDL with Reach (forward or backwards)

What it’s good for: all of the above. In addition to all the other benefits, this one will challenge your balance.  This is another exercise that can help groove a pattern, namely the hip hinge.

Putting it all together

Another note, I try to program warm-ups to progress- loosely anyway- from ground, to quadruped, to standing. For example:

Crocodile Breathingx 8 breaths

Quadruped Rockbacks x 10

DL Glute Bridge x 8, hold :02

Bulldog Hip Mobility x 8 each

Spiderman w/ OH Reach x 6/side, hold 1 breath

Bear Crawl x 8 yds

Walking SL RDL x 6/side

That whole thing should take about 5-8 minutes; a small commitment for big benefits!

The body is like a car: you can’t expect the car to speed off at 80 miles and hour on a cold day. Likewise, you can’t expect your body to jump into heavy strength work while it’s still cold. Prevent injuries and capitalize on your time under the bar by employing a proper warm-up before each training session.

Great Warm-up Movement You've Never Tried

MB Push + StartWhat is it? A great warm-up tool for getting the CNS firing and reminding the body how to produce a lot of force against the ground. The movement approximates the start for a sprint event. You can’t get as low as you do in the blocks, but it helps teach and reinforce how to produce great amounts of force as you are falling forward.

Why use it? See above, plus it’s fun!

Who should use it? Any athlete that is concerned about a “quick first step.”

If I were to coach myself based on my demonstration in the video, I clearly need to work on allowing myself to fall a fraction of a second longer and spend another fraction of a second extending through and taking advantage of the triple extension moment.

Overall, not too bad for a woman who had a baby exactly one-year ago tomorrow!