Pre/Post/Between-set exercises?

[EG STyLeZ]

What kinds of things do you do before your workout (ie. warming up muscle w/ light weights)?

What about directly after a workout, or 24 hours after?

How about between sets (ie. stretching)?

What have you found works for you?

[b_t]

Before a workout I do my ab workout.. generally doesn't reduce the weight you can lift for other exercises and gets the blood flowing pretty good.
Then I do my heavy exercises (deadlifts & bench) first. For a warm up on those, I do just the bar 8 reps, then 95 8 reps then 115 6 reps then 135 6 reps then one rep of the full weight, wait a couple minutes, and start my normal sets (4x8). I don't warm up for small exercises (tricep press, bicep curl, etc.) but then again, I don't do many isolation exercises
In between sets, I don't do anything. I superset everything then wait around for about a minute, get a drink of water and loosen up a bit, then right back into it.
Directly after a workout I drink a protein shake and then more likely than not, go home and play Halo. I don't do cardio at all. This all worked for me to gain ~20 pounds.

[EG STyLeZ]

I usually warmup by running the treadmill for a couple minutes, then warmup the target muscle w/ just the bar or w/ a light weight.

I've heard somewhat-aggressive stretching between sets and static stretching after your workout can give results to some people.

Also I've heard that doing a couple very light sets 24h after your workout can be beneficial as well (ie. doing pushups the next day after a chest workout). Just seeing if anyone uses these.

[Darkane]

Extreme stretching like DC style is very dangerous. It's best left for advanced lifters honestly.

On that note, active recovery is what you're referring to in the third point there. AR is not necessarily dangerous but if done improperly can result in unrecoverable CNS. Basically you don't recover and don't make gains during the REST period. Again left for advanced lifters.

Best thing to do actually is just dial in your diet and routine. It's amazing how many people aren't eating correctly because they don't know how. T-Nation.com has excellent eating articles.

Note: Advanced lifters can be defined as anybody in the 300/400/500 range of core lifts. (Bench, Squat, DeadS)

[jumperman8]

If you want to leave the gym feeling liek you gave a hundred percent and had an rediculars work out....try doing minute intervals of skipping between every set. I guarantee you will be tired as hell when your work out is over, but keeps your heart rate at a significant speed throughout your work out, you may find you even push more weight up.

Want to do crazy stuff....www.crossfit.com

Their work out of the days and shit are off the charts intense.