“How does that feel?”
This is the first question I ask clients when they are working out.
It is usually followed by, “Where do you feel that?”
I can offer feedback about technique, but if a client feels pain or is unsure which muscles should be working, injury and/or poor performance can result.
As a yoga teacher and a CrossFit coach, I want to make sure that my students are able to fully embody their movement practices. This isn’t just about them getting a great workout; it’s about pain and injury prevention.
Exercises for Smart Strength
In strength training class settings, teachers are usually performing triage–addressing the students most likely to hurt themselves (due to technique or misalignments), and working down from there.
The problem with this system is that sometimes lifts can look okay from the outside, but students aren’t always aware of how/what to engage to stay safe or get the most from their efforts. That’s where the “where do you feel this?” becomes important.
I use several Tune Up Fitness® techniques in my teaching to help those in the gym turn on the muscles that might be sleepy. These injury prevention exercises also refine neuromuscular control to better execute challenging movements that show up both in practice, and daily life. Try out the below practices to warm up for deadlifts, pull-ups, and squats.
See if you “feel” a difference.
Wise Up Your Deadlifts
Even a flat back and engaged core don’t mean that the muscles of the lower back won’t take over this movement.
I use Warrior III Squats at the Wall to teach how to hip hinge as well as fire up the whole backside of the lower body to get ready to lift something heavy.
- With hands on the wall at hip height, walk the feet back until the torso is parallel to the floor.
- Make sure the hips are right over the feet, and the ribs are pulled up and together.
- Standing on the right leg, lift the left leg away from the floor, foot even with hips.
- Lift up through the right hip to create evenness in the pelvis. (For my yoga peeps, its Warrior III at the wall)
- Bend the right leg, reaching the hips back. Be sure to keep the shoulders in line with the hips, keeping the back flat.
- For added challenge, place a block (or an Ab Mat) on the back of the pelvis to make sure you’re not “squatting” v “hinging”.
More Precise Pull-Ups
Many people come to CrossFit with the goal to “do a pull-up.” This is a great goal. It creates grip strength, hanging shoulder health, and awesome strong back muscles.
Problem is, if you’ve been sitting all day with a rounded spine, chances are your lats are overstretched and turned off.
I have my clients warm up those pulling actions by doing Lat Lengthener to help the shoulders get ready to go in an overhead position as well as wake up those big back muscles.
- Stand facing the wall.
- Place hands at the wall and walk the feet out until the hands, shoulders, and hips are in line.
- Turn your feet and lower body 45 degrees to the left, keeping your chest facing the floor as you do.
- Push through the left hand into the wall to lengthen through the left side.
- Repeat on the other side.
Smarten Your Squat
As a squat warmup, we perform Marching! This helps warm up hip flexion without the added stress of weight (body or bar).
Plus, as a coach, I can assess a new student’s body awareness if I add in instructions such as, “stabilize your pelvis”, or “don’t let the standing leg bend.”
This can tell me a lot about what sort of limitations a client might be working with. If you really want your students to fire up those glutes, do this with an elastic band around the ankles!
- Standing on the right leg, pull the left knee towards the chest using the hip flexor muscles.
- Make sure the heel is in front of the body, especially if you’re using a band for this exercise.
- Brace the core to resist the temptation to “tuck” or curl the pelvis – keep it as neutral as possible.
- Place the left leg down and repeat on the other side.
- For extra burn, speed it up!
- See if you can control the side to side lurch and keep your center of gravity over the midline of the body.
- Enjoy those squat gainz!
Related Article: Power Exercises for Inner Peace: A Conversation with Olympic Weightlifter Elizabeth Wipff and CrossFitter R.E. Lewis
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I appreciate the warm up pearls in this post – so simple, but very effective.
The tip on adding the block on top of the back of the pelvis in hinging is an excellent idea. So many beginners to movement don’t have great awareness of where there hips are in space, much less the back of the hips while bent over. Excellent tool for feedback. Thank you
I also use YTU poses in my classes. IStudents are suprised that the smallest adjustment or tweak of their position can illicit big results like waking up a sleepy muscle
This is so helpful for giving simple yet effective tools for people to develop their body awareness and not only learn, but feel, the importance of priming muscles for the movement and actions you want them to do. I learned after years and years fo barre that I wasn’t doing the exercises properly. I often wouldn’t feel a move where they said you should, but figured if I was in the right position it didn’t matter. Once I learned how to connect to those muscles and feel it, it was such a game changer! It’s so important especially when lifting heavy weights to be able to fine tune the muscle activation in your own body.
The analogy of sleepy muscles is a great way to awaken introspection within the average gym goer. Myself being one of them sometimes tapping a muscle group, or engaging through a variety of movements achieving that same goal can be extremely beneficial, and in this case to wake up the posterior chain with precision controlled meanwhile not just allowing the body to “throw” through the movement.
Great ideas! I can feel how the Warrior 3 at the wall can help integrate the back chain. The marching video is helpful too – especially with the band. Looks challenging!
Very interesting article and appreciate the videos. You make a really good point that form can look correct but the relevant muscles may not be activated.
Very interesting warm up exercices will give it a try
Bonjour, article intéressant où j’ai découvert la pose de latLangthener et l’utilisation de l’élastique dans la marche. merci
I love correlations between exercises, especially in different fitness modalities. These exercises almost feel like a “changing of orientation” way of thinking about these very common strength moves. Using the wall to assist in shoulder flexion before you had weight and move against gravity it brilliant and will humble us all!
Thanks for the read. It’s given me more insight to train smarter not harder and how important it is to bring your body awareness to every movement.
I love the ideas presented in this article about building awareness on the muscles and joint actions that constitute a certain exercise before performing the exercise itself. I’ve started including resistance bands into my Yoga classes and although it may look very unusual, many practitioner have come up to me and commented on how the bands helped them “feel” their muscles for the first time.
This is a wonderful contribution to this blog as it brings the strength training benefits for a YTU practice to the forefront. If someone is not able to feel the groups of muscles being asked to support in a strength exercise, it is extremely difficult for them to use and engage those muscles appropriately. The proprioceptive help that your exercises provide for deadlifts, squats and pull ups are simple add-ons that really shift proprioception of key movements or muscle groups needed to effectively perform these common movements. I am always looking for creative ways to light up key movement pathways as warm-ups or regressions for difficult actions. Thanks for some ideas!
I am always looking for modifications to help progress my clients/ patients for function exercises when their awareness isn’t quite where it should be. The warrior III is particularly helpful for my client population, thank you.
Thanks for these awesome exercises! I will practice the exercises with my clients in private training. They will appreciate this addition.
Thank you for the tips. Very interesting to incorporate in few movement.
I’ve just recently completed my YTU teacher training and I can’t wait to add some of the drills I’ve learned to compliment my bodybuilding training in the gym just as you have. Thanks for jump starting the process!
Wow!
I am impressed by your good ideas! To try!
Thank you for sharing context-wise utilization of the YTU moves. I had fun doing the exercises while thinking about their application.
I love the warm up for the deadlift. I’ve been having a tough time getting my Mom to differentiate squatting vs hinging, but she does take my yoga classes, so I will try the warrior 3 at the wall technique. Added glute work with the resistance band was awesome also!
I like that you use Yoga Tune Up exercises in relation to strength training. So often people are closed minded and don’t make the connection…. it’s all movement regardless of the modality. I also think it’s awesome that you teach both CrossFit and Yoga. You go girl!
Wow! I could have used these exercises as preps to build into my bigger movement and heavier lifts in my weightlifting training. I appreciate the pull up prep the most, probably because it is the most challenging for me to activate muscles stabilizing the shoulder girdle while directionally activating the shoulder into external rotation without actually moving the body.
Referring to “exercises with smart strength” really directs the attention into which muscles should be working to support a heavy lift, such as when performing the weighted squat. If the posterior chain isn’t firing properly, something has gone awry. Activating these muscles in a supportive and non-exhausting way beforehand promotes better body awareness and propioception while moving in space, and without compromising the agonistic muscles supporting the movement in a safe and effective way.
I’m going to test my performance on the big 3 lifts and the pull-ups by incorporating the author’s exercise preps during my next lifting session. Excited…!
This is so important to feel you shape before you put on any load. So many times I see this at the gym. Awaken proprioception in your body should be mandatory for everyone before any workout. Something that many of the athletes I train say has opened a whole new way of training for them, painfree.
Great article! I’m excited to learn & incorporate these into my practice!
Helpful tips for squats and lifting. Made better because we did Squats in class today — thanks for sharing.
Great piece! As both a CF Athlete and yoga teacher, I too notice that the trouble these days in both the box and the studio is that so much emphasis is on how a movement or pose looks (Aesthetics), versus how it feels- so I just love your coaching check ins! ??
What great tools! Thank you for sharing these, they are fantastic! This creates and intelligent and fast burn in the muscles (in a good awareness kind of burn)!
Most definitely will be trying these for self and clients. Wow!
In YTU training this week. i have been a modern dancer for years and teach modern dance-id love take your class.
Thank you for this article! It causes us teachers to look at our students in a different mindset. Not only teaching people an exercise but teaching them to get into there bodies. Thank you for showing simpler ways to do an exercise correctly.
Thanks for sharing , so many times we just focus on the final pose and we forget about how important preparation YTU poses are in order to prevent injury. Can´t wait to try this poses 🙂
Super helpful post! I’m excited to try the Lat Lengthener before working on Pull ups. Using marching for my students as a warm-up for squatting also makes a lot of sense. I like the idea of using different verbage in directing the movement as a tool to assess a student’s body awareness. Smart and resourceful use of time, with a new or even a seasoned client!
Thanks for sharing this article! I love how YTU can be directed to anything we do in life and in gym settings i think is essential to bring these type of exercises to work on proprioception and better perform the movements.
This article is super helpful. Thanks! I love the insight into the totality of the body working in all of these shapes and strength exercises and the reminder that sometimes there may be an unperceived reliance on what we view externally as always “correct”. I agree and am humbly reminded of the need ask for feedback in order to assess and keep things safe and sustainable. I recently tried your “marching” warm up with a resistance band for my students and I think they really understood what it means to fire up their glutes.
great modification of warrior III with glute engagement in lieu of a dead lift also wall dog with oblique reach through.
As a personal trainer who puts a lot of thought and education into how to optimally warmup the body before exercise… these 3 drills are awesome! And add even more flare to my warmups/activations. Thank you!
I thought this article was interesting. It makes me wonder if intense HIIT classes are good for you since the structure of the class doesn’t allow for you to correct your alignment. You’re moving so fast and holding heavy weights, I can see that over time it could lead to injury if you do not have proper technique and are not engaging the proper muscles. There isn’t a lot of time incorporated to warm up the muscles as well.
I never realized how daily habits could create an imbalance in your body. I am now more conscious about my posture and aware of small things like how I tend to cross my right leg over my left I will incorporate the lat lengthener exercise since I tend to round my back, overstretching the lats. How many should you be doing on each side?
I thought this article was interesting. It makes me wonder if intense HIIT classes are good for you since the structure of the class doesn’t allow for you to correct your alignment. You’re moving so fast and holding heavy weights, I can see that over time it could lead to injury if you do not have proper technique and are not engaging the proper muscles. There isn’t a lot of time incorporated to warm up the muscles as well.
I never realized how daily habits could create an imbalance in your body. I am now more conscious about my posture and aware of small things like how I tend to cross my right leg over my left. I will incorporate the lat lengthener exercise since I tend to round my back, overstretching the lats. How many should you be doing on each side?
Looking to incorporate deadlifts into my training and training big muscle groups in general. I will definitely try the Warrior 3 at the wall. I shy away from one leg exercises because of an unstable knee but I actually probably need them the most…
Great article, lots of helpful tips on proper weight/strength training!
This is a very helpful article! I’m going to start incorporating this into my weekly routine!