Warm-ups are essential for a decent contortion training session. Not only do they get your body ready for the relevant skill work that you’ll be doing, it helps to get you into the right place mentally.

Warming up for stretching may seem uneccessery, since many usually consider stretching to be part of the warm up for another activity, leaving the question of “what do you do when stretching is the activity?”

It is the same as anything else that you are training to improve in – you wouldn't go into a dance routine or a tumbling sequence from being cold, you would work your way up to it. Similarly with stretching for contortion, you work your way up to the ends of your normal range of mobility and then gently take yourself past them.

As with other exercise, keeping your warmup relevant to the activity you are about to do is a useful habit to get into. Different body types respond to different styles of warmup so here are some ideas to get you started.

Some great ways to warm up for your contortion training

Light cardio

Some people find it beneficial to get the blood flowing with some light cardio, if you’re training at a gym this is pretty easy as you’ll have access to equipment such as bikes, treadmills and rowing machines that will help you get pretty warm in a short amount of time. For those training at home, skipping can be a good option as well as running on the spot, burpees or mountain climbers.

What do you mean by cardio?

"Cardio" is the name given to Cardiovascular activities that raise both your breathing and your heart rate. There are many activities that do this, the most common being running in place or jumping jacks.

Examples of cardio warmups

On a Bike

5 minutes slow pedal warmup with no resistance

10 minutes light to medium resistance with a decent pace of peddling

On a Rowing Machine

5 minutes slow rowing

3 minutes medium paced rowing

No equipment

Do 3 rounds of:

30 seconds jumping jacks

20 seconds high knees

20 seconds of heel flicks

20 seconds of mountain climbers

Bodyweight fitness

The flexibility that you work on is one side of the contortion coin that you are working towards. While increasing your flexibility does seem like the end goal, to build really good foundations in your contortion training you need to make sure you have an excellent level of strength to help you train in a sustainable and safe way. Bodyweight exercises are a great way to build this strength in a way that is relevant to your contortion training and they need no equipment either!

What are bodyweight exercises?

Bodyweight exercises are, like the name would suggest exercises that use only your own body weight to create the resistance you need to build strength in your muscles. This is as opposed to using an external weight source such as weights.

Why are bodyweight exercises a good warmup for contortion?

Bodyweight exercises are a good route for warming up for your training as they raise your heart rate but also the strength element can also give your body a bit more stability for your contortion session. This is especially the case when doing backbending training and even more so as you get more advanced in the type of training that you do.

Examples of bodyweight warmups

Three rounds of

5-10 Pushups

5-10 Squats

5-10 Single leg lunges

Three rounds of

30 second hollow body hold

30 second reverse dish

30 second dish

30 second reverse bridge

Sun salutations

Another good option is borrowing from an adjacent discipline, that being yoga. In many styles of yoga the practice begins with a sequence of poses called sun salutations. This is a set of specific poses that are done in one continuous sequence through several rounds. In yoga these poses get a practitioner warmed up, but also make the practitioner more aware of their breathing while moving through the poses. This is equally as important in contortion as it is in yoga as it helps with control and relaxation in poses.

The best warmups are a combination!

Keeping your warmups interesting means you're more likely to do them, and that they will be more fun to do rather than a chore that feel like your coach makes you do. A good warmup can combine both cardio activities with bodyweight exercises.

An example warmup could be:

Complete 5 rounds

30 seconds of jumping jacks

20 seconds of mountain climbers

30 seconds hollow hold

20 seconds reverse dish hold

10 single leg lunges

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