The Right Way To Warm Up Before Games

Warmups. Some players hate them, most – at best – tolerate them, and many teams do them suboptimally, if not outright incorrectly.

If you’ve been playing for a few years and have been on multiple teams, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that variability between warmup protocols across (and even within) teams is enormous. What explains this variety? As a sport, shouldn’t we have nailed down exactly which are the best activities to perform before playing? Who’s in charge here?

Perhaps warmups are inherently frustrating because they are so misunderstood and misapplied. This article is here to shed some light on the topic and provide a framework for priority, order of operations, and desired result.

Let’s start with the name. “Warmup” is used here as an umbrella term that includes things like muscle tissue pliability, mobility, and muscle activation, as well as kinesiology concepts like position, stability, twitch, locomotion, and central nervous system stimulation. It is not simply “feeling warm,” as in temperature. Do not let a teammate step onto the field because they “jogged here from the parking lot” and are “warm.”

A more accurate term for what we want to do before playing (and training) is “movement preparation.”

Movement Preparation Principles

There are three main movement preparation principles we at Breakside endorse for optimal performance:

Mobility: Possibly the most contentious. For the same reasons that athletes love to hate static stretching, many avoid pre-game mobility. It’s boring. We know. We also know that it is not essential for absolutely everyone. About 25% of athletes are naturally mobile enough that they do not need to perform mobility work (and, statistically speaking, most in that 25% are female). Are you in that 25%? Are you sure? If not, get on the line and show solidarity with your teammates. Mobility compromises about three minutes of the entire movement prep protocol, and for the remaining 75% of us who aren’t hypermobile, it is essential for being able to achieve the high range-of-motion positions that occur during:

  • First step acceleration
  • Maximum velocity sprinting
  • Step-out throwing
  • Full extension layouts
  • Skying

In short, the highlight moments. If you want to miss out on those, by all means, skip mobility.

Activation: Another pretty basic principle that the “instasphere” wants to banish as just another buzzword. But it’s really a pretty basic, sound, and reliable principle: contract certain muscles during movement prep, and they contract more readily in the moments that follow. There is, in fact, a decent body of research that suggests maximal contractions are even more beneficial than the submaximal contractions typically employed during movement prep. This concept is called post-activation potentiation (PAP).

Essentially, the research has found that a 1 rep max strength movement (think squat or deadlift) leads to enhanced performance in all kinds of speed and power based activities including olympic lifts, box jumps, broad jumps, and sprints. Could we see players attempting to deadlift their cars in the parking lot before playing in the future? Probably not — the research is still very new on this topic, and it appears that mimicking the movement you want to improve is a key factor in the PAP effect, so a resisted run prior to sprinting might be more effective.

Regardless of its potential, post-activation potentiation lends credence to the idea of activation, and the science is clear: flexing the muscles you want to use before playing remains a safe, reliable way to prepare for field sport play.

Locomotion: The real stuff. Moving your actual body around. There is a little bit of locomotion built into some of the previous phases (for example, we do walking hip openers instead of kneeling hip openers, even though kneeling might be more effective at mobilization because we want to start moving our body during our warmups).

As we’ve written about before, moving through space involves three key planes: sagittal, lateral, and transverse (or: forwards, sideways, and turning) so our locomotion section should include drills and movements in all these planes. Locomotion includes dozens of variations on marching, skipping, acceleration, deceleration, turning, backpedaling, and shuffling.

Let’s zoom in on applying these. Keep in mind that order of operations is important. This is one of the things most teams do wrong. They have a list of movement prep items that they know, and they do them in a random order. The lists below take you through warmups in the preferred order (mobilization->activation->locomotion) and are organized into routines based on available time. Because you warm up in the real world.

The “We’re Down 2-0, Get in There” Warmup

Just the essentials. Get it done in 2-3 minutes.

Mobility

  • Forward Lunge with twist

Activation

  • Hip Bridge
  • SLDL

Locomotion

  • Pop Float Skip
  • Accelerate to 180 turn (60%, 80%, 100%)

The “Pull in 15” Warmup

Finish this in 10 minutes, then run some endzone reps.

Mobility

  • Walking Knee to Chest
  • Walking Quad Stretch
  • Cradle Walk
  • Crawling Thoracic Rotation
  • Forward Lunge Walk
  • Side Lunge

Activation

  • Leg Lifts
  • Hip Bridge
  • Single Leg Side Plank
  • SLDL

Locomotion

  • Marching Skip
  • B-Skip
  • Pop Float Skip
  • Lateral Skip
  • Crossover Skip
  • Accelerators (50%-70%, 70%-90%, 70%-100%)
  • Accelerate to 180 Turns (60%, 80%, 100%)

The “Tryhard” Warmup

Do this in a perfect world, when you have all time you need

Mobility

  • Walking Knee to Chest
  • Walking Quad Stretch
  • Cradle Walk
  • Spiderman Crawl
  • Side Lying Thoracic Rotation
  • Toe Touch to Squat
  • Leg Lower
  • Shoulder Band Mobility
  • Forward Overhead Lunge Walk
  • Inchworm
  • Side Lunge
  • Cossack Lunge
  • Torso Rotation with Arm Release

Activation

  • Leg Lifts
  • Hip Bridge
  • Single Leg Side Plank
  • Mini Band Lateral Walk
  • Internal/External Rotation Holds
  • SLDL with Increasing Power
  • Back Slappers

Locomotion

  • Bouncing Calf Walk
  • Build up to Marching Skip
  • Marching Skip
  • B-Skip
  • Pop Float Skip
  • RRL/LLR Skip
  • Lateral Skip
  • Crossover Skip
  • Cariocas
  • Decelerators
  • Deceleration Turns (60%, 80%, 100%)
  • Accelerators (50%-70%, 70%-90%, 70%-100%)
  • Accelerate to 180 Turns (60%, 80%, 100%)
  • Reactive Shuffle
  • Reactive Backpedal to Acceleration/Turn
  • Reactive 180 Turns
  • Partner Mirroring

Bonus: The Bye Warmup

For after you just laid on the ground for 45 minutes

Mobility

  • Kneeling Hip Flexor/ Hamstring Mob
  • Spiderman Crawl
  • Side Lying Thoracic Rotation
  • Leg Lower
  • Reverse Overhead Lunge Walk
  • Side Lunge
  • Torso Rotation with Arm Release

Activation

  • Hip Bridge
  • SLDL with Increasing Power
  • Back Slappers

Locomotion

  • Build up to Marching Skip
  • Marching Skip
  • B-Skip
  • Pop Float Skip
  • Lateral Skip
  • Crossover Skip
  • Deceleration Turns (60%, 80%, 100%)
  • Accelerators (50%-70%, 70%-90%, 70%-100%)
  • Accelerate to 180 Turns (60%, 80%, 100%)
  • Reactive 180 Turns

It’s worth noting that one things a lot of teams do get right is using small-sided games (e.g. 3v3) as a part of their warmups. Small-sided games have the double benefit of both getting you touches with the disc and serving as an excellent way to improve sprint speed and explosiveness as a part of a warm up routine. Consider adding them to your team’s arsenal if you haven’t already.

To see how to perform these warmups. sign up for a Breakside subscription, starting at only $10/month.

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