Warm Ups for Workouts: One Protocol for Every Cardio Session

Google how to warm up for sprints — 15 to 20 minutes. For HIIT — 5 to 10. Ask ChatGPT — somewhere in between, wrapped in enough confidence that you almost believe it. Same athlete. Same training week. Three different answers, none of them right.

After 25 years coaching fighters who train around full-time careers, I’ve distilled the research into one protocol that handles every cardio session — explosive or aerobic — in under 15 minutes, with one decision point at the end. No wasted effort. No pre-fatigued intervals. Here’s exactly how it works.

Before we go further — the warm-up is one piece. But if you’re not sure whether your overall training is actually building your conditioning or just accumulating fatigue, that’s a bigger problem. The free Muay Thai Performance Scorecard will show you exactly where you stand, what’s holding you back, and what to fix first. Five minutes. Link in the description. Now — back to the warm-up.

Here’s the cost most people don’t think about.

A poor warm-up doesn’t just waste your first few intervals. It raises the RPE — the perceived effort — of every interval that follows.

The session doesn’t get harder. You find it harder to push through it.

A 2019 study on warm-up protocols found that short, task-specific warm-ups — around 10 minutes — reduced perceived exertion by nearly 20 percent compared to longer general routines, while actually resulting in superior performance. Specificity mattered more than duration. You reach peak readiness while saving more mental and physical fuel for the work that actually builds your conditioning.

Think of it this way: every unit of effort you spend in the warm-up is a unit you can’t put into the intervals that actually build your conditioning. The warm-up should cost you as little as possible while preparing you as much as possible. That’s the standard.

So why does the advice vary so much? It’s not random — there’s a real reason.

Explosive sessions — hill sprints, sled pushes, repeated sprints — genuinely need your nervous system switched on. Fast-twitch muscle fibers primed and ready to fire from rep one. If they’re not, your first few efforts are just expensive warm-up reps.

HIIT and threshold sessions — threshold runs, VO2 max efforts, Tabata intervals — need something different. Your aerobic system has a lag. It takes time to ramp up oxygen delivery. Without the right preparation, your body leans on anaerobic reserves just to cover that gap, burning through your buffer before the session even gets hard.

Different demands. Different systems. So the conventional answer is different warm-ups, different durations, different approaches. And that’s where it gets complicated — and where most people either overdo it, underdo it, or just pick one approach and apply it to everything.

But here’s what the research actually shows — and what I’ve distilled into a single protocol that handles both.

The research doesn’t say you need two different warm-ups. It says you need two different recoveries. And that changes everything.

I’ve taken the research on both explosive and HIIT warm-up preparation, stripped out everything that doesn’t move the needle, and built a single protocol that covers both — with one decision point at the end that routes you to the right recovery for your session.

I call it my Dual Purpose Warm-Up Protocol.

One 10-minute phase. One decision. That’s it.

This is my own distillation — built from the physiology, tested in training, designed to give you the highest return on your warm-up time with zero wasted effort. Under-cooked or over-heated — both cost you. This keeps you exactly in between.

Here’s how it works.

Phase 1 is identical regardless of what session follows. Eight task-specific builds of 10 seconds each, with 60 seconds of rest between every rep.

The intensity builds across the eight reps in pairs.

Reps one and two — RPE 6. About 60 percent effort. You’re moving, not working.

Reps three and four — RPE 7.5. You can feel it now.

Reps five and six — RPE 8.5. Controlled hard effort.

Reps seven and eight — RPE 9.5. Near maximal. You mean it.

Total time: just under 10 minutes.

The 60-second rest between reps isn’t passive. Use it for dynamic mobility — arm swings, hip rotations, leg swings. You’re keeping the body moving, increasing range of motion, without adding any meaningful fatigue.

The critical word here is task-specific. The builds mirror the session. Running sessions — you run. Air bike sessions — you sprint. Bag work — you hit. You’re not doing a general jog before a sprint session. You’re doing short sprint builds. The warm-up is a scaled-down version of the work itself.

What’s happening physiologically in these 10 minutes: muscle temperature reaches its optimal plateau, joint viscosity drops so you’re moving freely, and your neuromuscular system starts firing at the speed the session demands. All of it, in 10 minutes, without pre-fatiguing yourself.

If you’re running the Heavy Hitters program, this Phase 1 applies across every conditioning session — Explosive Repeats, Threshold Training, Cardiac Power Intervals, Strongman Endurance — all of them. Same engine. Different fuel for what comes next.

Phase 1 is done. Now you make one decision based on what’s coming.

If your session is explosive — hill sprints, sled pushes, repeated sprints, high resistance intervals — you take Track A.

Three minutes of active rest. RPE 1 to 2. Slow walking, light movement. That’s it.

Here’s what’s happening in those three minutes. The high-intensity builds in Phase 1 have already triggered post-activation potentiation. Your nervous system is primed. Fast-twitch fibers are on standby, ready to generate force faster than they could 10 minutes ago. The three-minute window lets your ATP and phosphocreatine energy stores replenish fully while that neural excitation stays high. Any shorter and you’re still fatigued. Any longer and you start to lose the potentiation effect.

When you hit your first interval, you’re already potentiated. That first sprint isn’t a warm-up rep in disguise. It counts.

If your session is threshold or HIIT-based — threshold runs, VO2 max efforts, Tabata intervals, cardiac power intervals, aerobic plyometrics, tempo intervals — you take Track B.

Five to 10 minutes of passive rest. RPE 0 to 1. Sit down, stand still, very light movement. Longer window, lower activity.

Here’s why. Phase 1 has elevated your baseline oxygen consumption. Your aerobic system is already running above its resting state. The longer recovery window lets the metabolic fatigue from the builds clear while that elevated baseline stays. So when your first interval starts, your aerobic system is already online. You’re not playing catch-up. You’re not burning through anaerobic reserves just to cover the lag. You have capacity from rep one.

The recovery window in both tracks isn’t downtime. It’s where the protocol does its work. Cut it short and you’ve pre-fatigued yourself for nothing.

Zone 2 — or cardiac output training if you’re familiar with the term — is the one session that needs neither track.

Zone 2 is low intensity, long duration. And a dedicated warm-up protocol actually works against you here. It spikes your core temperature and thermoregulatory strain before the session has even started, which is exactly what you’re trying to avoid in a session that’s going to last 30 to 60 minutes.

What to do instead: ramp into it. Start at the lower end of your Zone 2 intensity range for the first five minutes. The session is the warm-up.

That’s it. Simplest protocol of all, because the session design already accounts for it.

One protocol. One decision. Minimum time, maximum return on the session you’ve programmed.

The goal of a warm-up has never been to feel like you’ve worked. It’s to prepare you to work — and then get out of the way. The Dual Purpose Protocol does exactly that. Eight builds, one recovery track, and you walk into your first interval with everything you need and nothing you don’t.

Under-cooked or over-heated — both cost you your best efforts. This keeps you exactly in between.

Want to apply that same principle to your entire training program — spending exactly what’s required and nothing that isn’t? Take the free Muay Thai Performance Scorecard. It’ll show you exactly what’s working, what’s missing, and what to focus on next. Five minutes. Instant results. Zero fluff. Link in the description.

And if you want to understand why the type of cardio you’re doing matters as much as how you warm up for it — watch this next. Most fighters are training in a way that feels hard but is quietly destroying their aerobic engine. I’ll link it on screen now and in the description.