Warm Up Tips for CrossFit Open Workout 26.2 (From a Physical Therapist)
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
Compared to last week, this workout still involves some legs and posterior chain, but it’s going to feel much more shoulder-dominant.
Because of that, your warm-up should prioritize two main things:
Preparing your shoulders for overhead stability
Priming your pulling muscles for the gymnastics work
A good warm-up will help your shoulders feel better during the workout and make your movement more efficient once fatigue sets in.
Prefer to follow along visually? Watch the warm-up exercise video demo below.
Prep Your Overhead Position
Start by warming up your shoulders and opening up some mobility in the overhead lockout position. You’ll need a solid overhead position for the dumbbell overhead lunges and dumbbell snatches so you can avoid any no-reps.
If overhead positions tend to feel tight, I’d again recommend active thread-the-needle from last week’s breakdown. This exercise helps improve thoracic extension through improving thoracic rotation, which contributes to a more comfortable overhead position.
Two additional exercises that can help prepare your shoulders for this workout are lat eccentrics and banded overhead presses.
Tight lats are a common reason people struggle to achieve a good overhead position. Lat eccentrics help lengthen the lats, which can make it easier to bring your arm overhead into a full lockout position.
After that, banded overhead presses help reinforce and stabilize that new range of motion. Think of this as teaching your shoulders how to control the new range of motion that you just opened up.
A simple sequence could look like this:
Active thread-the-needle to improve extension and upper-back mobility
Lat eccentrics to lengthen the lats and improve overhead range
Banded overhead presses to stabilize the overhead position
Don’t Forget Your Glutes
Even though this workout will likely feel shoulder-heavy, your hips still play an important role during the dumbbell snatches.
I’d recommend adding banded good mornings from last week’s warm-up to help activate your glutes and reinforce the hip hinge pattern.
This helps prime your posterior chain so that when you start snatching, you’ll use your hips and glutes rather than relying too much on your lower back.
Warm Up Your Shoulder Stabilizers
For the gymnastics portion of the workout, it’s also important to warm up the smaller stabilizing muscles around the shoulder.
Exercises like scapular pull-ups and banded T/Y can help improve scapular control and motor coordination, which can decrease your risk for shoulder injuries during the gymnastics movements.
A Quick Reality Check About Pull-Ups
I know the Open is exciting because it’s often when people get their first rep of certain skill, like their first pull-up, first double-under, and so on.
But if you cannot perform a scapular pull-up yet, I highly recommend that you do not attempt to get your first kipping pull-up.
A scapular pull-up represents the foundational strength and coordination required for both strict and kipping pull-ups. So if you don’t have that base yet, the likelihood of safely getting a pull-up under fatigue is very low.
However, if you’ve been working toward your first pull-up and are close, this absolutely could be the workout where it happens.
Be Smart With Your Dumbbell Snatches
Try to avoid excessive twisting during the dumbbell snatches to decrease the chance of injuring your back during this portion. The twisting motion shows up more often during hang dumbbell snatches, but it can still show up here as fatigue sets in.
As the workout progresses, another common pattern is that athletes start letting their hips stay too high, which shifts more of the workload onto the glutes and less on the quads. So as fatigue builds, try to switch between using your legs and using your glutes to avoid overtaxing one over the other.
And finally, make sure you nail the hip hinge to avoid rounding your back. Even though you'll only be doing 20 reps at a time, that volume will add up quickly.
Lunge Tip: Use Your Back Leg
A common mistake I see with lunges is athletes using the front leg to do all of the work when standing up from the lunge, which puts a lot of pressure on the front knee.
When standing up from a lunge, use your back foot to help push off the ground. This helps drive your body forward and distributes the effort more evenly between both legs.
Quick Warm-Up Summary for 26.2
Add these exercises to your warm-up:
Active Thread-the-Needle
Lat Eccentrics
Banded Overhead Press
Banded Good Mornings
Scapular Pull-ups
Banded T/Y
Target
Overhead lockout position
Scapular stabilizers
Posterior chain
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