The 2% Warmup

You’ll learn: The 6 stretches I do daily, how to do them, and why they work.

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I’ve been having fun and productive conversations with Founders of 2% over the last month. One question that’s come up often is some variation of, “What’s a good warmup I can do before every workout?”

Or there’s this recent chat I had with my friend and 2% reader Chris, a retired Green Beret.

Chris: I need more mobility in my life.

Me: OK, what problem are you trying to solve?

Chris: My broken body.

Lol. War will do that to you.

But so will life in general, to a lesser degree.

Being sedentary leads to aches and pains and poor movement. Fun and unfair fact: So does being active! Everything costs something.

Whether you use your body often or not, you’ll eventually face some aches and pains.

But those aches and pains are far more likely to occur if you aren’t doing some basic drills that improve your ability to move.

And the case for a good warmup isn’t just about avoiding pain. It’s also finding new performance.

The more efficiently you move, the better you’ll perform.

Yet most people skip warmups. I get it. Warmups are no fun, and they take too long.

This is why I’ve settled on the warmup below. It takes fewer than 10 minutes and I even look forward to it. It’s a calm, quiet moment every day.

Most importantly, it’s helped keep me from serious pain and injury. Yes, stuff still aches sometimes. But that’s a normal part of using your body.

I learned these exercises mostly from Doug Kechijian, with assists from Kelly and Juliett Starrett, and the great ultrarunning coach Nickademus de la Rosa.

Instructions

• Do each exercise once before every workout.
• It’d be a lot cooler if you did: Also do the warmup on rest days. That’ll keep you moving and feeling better over the long-term.

Time commitment

• The exercises themselves take about 8 minutes in total.
• Factor in transitioning between them and you can expect to be done in about 10 minutes.

Execution

• I’ve included a video so you can see how to perform each of the six stretches/drills/movements.