The Importance of a Good Warm-up
By Chip Gayden – Head Track and Field Coach at Meridian Community College
For many athletes, a warm-up is a, “going through the motions,” portion of practice. The warm-up is something that shouldn’t be a “go through the motion,” activity. A warm-up prepares your body for the upcoming practice. The warm-up can also set the tone for the practice you are about to have. It gives you a chance to improve your basic athleticism like coordination, mobility, flexibility and conditioning.
I had the great opportunity to work under Joe Walker at Ole Miss. The warm-up he used is something that I still use to this day and have added a few things over the years. Our warm-up would generally last 15-25 minutes depending on the day. It got the job done, but also loosened your whole body up and got your body temperature up. It was a true “warm-up.”
The warm-up would start on the grass with 8x100 barefoot grass strides with a 100 walk back. The purpose of doing it barefoot is to strengthen the foot. Doing your warm-up on the grass provides a softer surface than a track would. On days we would be lifting weights, we would cut the strides down to four.
Following our strides we would go right in to our sprint drills. For our sprint drills we would do these on the grass and still barefoot. The sprint drills are done 30 meters down and back. Sprint drills are an important part of the warm-up. It allows you to work on your mechanics and technique. We would do the following drills:
- Quick High Knees (light, quick, toes up)
- Skips – A Skips, B Skips (Make sure your toe is up)
- Butt Kicks
- Backwards Run (lean forward, heel to butt and reach back)
- Heel Walks (On your heels, toes are up, walk slowly)
- Basketball Shuffle (shuffle sideways, butt down, just like playing defense)
- Carioca
Following our sprint drills, we would stretch. During this time, we would go through various stretches. The stretches would vary during this part of the warm-up depending on the workout. It would always include stretches sitting on the ground and standing stretches.
Once we had completed stretching, we would do several drills on the grass. One of my favorite drills was placing 10 agility dummy bags on the grass and doing 2-3 sprints through them. The distance for the women was one dummy length and for the men was a little longer. This drill teaches you to pick your feet up quickly, correctly and down quickly. If you don’t do that, you will land face first on the ground. This drill can be done with laying cones sideways, or small agility hurdles.
Following our dummy sprint drill we would do a series of box jumps. During this we would have 3 boxes that were 20” set up in a row. You should go through the jumps, without pausing on landing. You go off one box and right back up to the next. Once we completed this drill we would go through our hurdle mobility 2-3 times.
Once we completed these drills, we were ready for the upcoming workup. During this time you get, water, Gatorade and go to the bathroom and you are ready for your workout.