#12 Warmup Routine: enter the zone, channel emotional state, enhance performance & learning

The Canoe Slalom Podcast

In the Episode 12, for the first time, I explore without a host, the warm up routine, and why it is important to enhance the learning opportunities and performance. In Canoe Slalom we have all been there, with a bad warm up or a good warm up and we have seen the difference. The statement "My body is a temple" is critical to ease the body more often into a good warm up routine: food and water intake, good sleep are the strong base to ease the body into the zone. Warming up is important to help the body to get into the right emotional and physical state: by a serie of physical, cognitive tasks that challenge the nervous system, we gently put the body into the zone, the state we called the flow, to thrive for performance. Cardio vacscular arousal, balance, breathing, dynamic stretches, technical drills, proprioception, self talk and so on are tools and behaviours we can use to trigger a chain of physical reactions that will ease the body and mind into the right emotional state. By consistently and purposefully using a variety of tools to warmup we get to experiment, practice, choose and refine our routine to better discover what is useful for us to thrive. A long term benefit is to teach the brain overtime what is acceptable to get into the zone; because the brain is lazy and rely on the least amount of energy to survive, we need to practice everyday to remind him what works best for us. But hang on! the brain tends to avoid the so called negative experiences, so make your warmup is exciting and full of games, challenging, to you make sure you maximise the efficiency! Pick tools according to your warmup as well, don't go full board everyday or you will brun out! So next time, you are late for training, at least you will know that you can pump your brain up cognitively or by doing breathing exercises in your car on the way to training to anticipate the huge load of information that will be thrown at you on the whitewater. Enjoy the Podcast!