Kim Kardashian’s personal trainer uses just five moves to warm up and build more muscle in her workouts—here’s how

Kim Kardashian has maintained a famously fit physique over the years and to do so she has spent a lot of time perfecting her exercise routine with fitness coach, Melissa Alcantara. Alcantara is an expert when it comes to increasing strength and fitness gains and has shared the warmup routine she uses for exactly this.

Before picking up your usual weights to strength train with, such as a pair of the best adjustable dumbbells,  a warm-up routine is essential. A 30-second bout of lunges and toe touches, unfortunately, won't cut it but you can still keep your warmups simple and time-efficient.

Alcantara recently shared with Women's Health that 85% of her and Kim's time is spent on weight training. This celebrity trainer is all for being efficient and maximizing gains as much as we all are and her five-move warmup is her answer to this.

The routine is easy to replicate and doesn't require any equipment so it's ideal for completing at home, and if you're at the gym, all you'll need is to find a space to stretch out. She recommends completing this circuit before an upper or lower body session and after doing two to three rounds 'you should be sweating'.

Watch Melissa Alcantara's Full-Body Workout Warmup

There is some debate in the fitness world over whether stretching before a strength session is beneficial for workout results or if it actually can reduce muscle strength and power.

One study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that static stretching before a strength-based workout may impair 'maximal force production' while training.

On the other hand, there is research in the Journal of Exercise Rehabilitation suggesting that warmups appear to have a 'meaningful effect on athletic performance by affording psychological stability, preparation, and confidence for exercise performance.'

Alcantara views a warmup as an essential way to get the most out of your workout. She stated on Instagram, "Most people warm up within their sets, sometimes taking up to 20-30 min of your actual workout meaning those 20-30 minutes you’re not training as efficiently as you could meaning you’re sacrificing gains!".

Warming up is also a great way to prevent any injuries while exercising. People's lifestyles are much more sedentary these days whether that's out of choice or because your job requires you to sit at a desk all day. So it's a good idea to wake up your muscles and ensure they feel activated before a workout. 

We've listed her five essential moves below for you to try out before your next workout. Or maybe you just want to use it as a nice stretching routine for after work or a long car journey somewhere.

• 5 Cat cows
• 10 Downward dog leg lifts each side
• 10 plank knee to elbow (slow movement)
• 10 Plank knee taps
• 10 Superman pushups

If you're wondering how Alcantara shapes Kim Kardashian's workout to keep her in consistently good shape she previously told StyleCaster that she uses the same workout on Kim that she uses herself. "I approach Kim's training just like mine", she noted. 

Like with anyone trying to build muscle and strength it's important that you keep on adding more weight to your exercises to see results. Progressive overload is a technique designed to gradually increase the challenge of your workouts which will lead to muscle hypertrophy. Typical resistance exercises used by Alcantara and Kim are hip thrusts, reverse lunges, chest presses, and shoulder presses. 

Kim sometimes shares snippets of her workouts on her Instagram and often the Stairmaster workout machine features. The Stairmaster workout is a good way to burn fat and work your lower body at the same time. But if you don't have access to one of these machines, incline walking can make a great substitute.