Effective Warm Ups

9 times out of 10, a solid, sharp warm up is followed by a great performance in either training, or on match day.

In this article, we’re going to learn about planning and delivering warm ups with best practice, to optimise physical and mental performance for youth football.

Best practice – THE RAMP PROTOCOL

• RAMP stands for Raise, Activate, Mobilise, and Potentiate,and if followed, will create effective and engaging warm ups which will improve your teams performance.
• The following 10-15 minute warm up protocol is used in elite football settings, and can also be applied to our own teams. It will make us alert, switched on, faster and more explosive,and will improve our on pitch performance. It can be applied in training, and on match day, before going into 10-15 minutes of more specific ball work, in which POSSESSION work is generally recommended where players are reacting and getting plenty of touches.

Raise- 2-3 minutes

Why? Phase One of the warm up, the raise, includes raising the body temperature, and increasing blood flow to muscles groups, so they can function more effectively.

• This includes easy multidirectional movements, specific to football performed at around 30%-60% intensity, gradually building up over 3 minutes and may include jogs, backpedals, side shuffles, forward and lateral skips, in a variety of different directions.
• This may be done in a classic two straight line set up, or a version I find successful and engaging is the following scheme- Set up a medium sized square area (18 yd x 18 yd) of cones evenly spread apart within the area. Have 2-4 more cones than the amount of players. E.g. 10 lads, 14 cones. The task is for the players to move in as many directions as possible and visit free cones, keeping on the move the whole time. This will encourage constant movement, creating space, and switch the players on.

Activate/Mobilise- 4-6 minutes

Why? Phase two encourages activation, mobilisation and stretching of key muscle groups, such as the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and hip flexors, which will allow them to be recruited to improve speed and agility by allowing these muscles to produce more force. Stretching should be kept dynamic.

EXAMPLES-

Butt kicks- Focus on squeezing the hamstrings and stretching the quads.

Reverse Lunges- 8 each leg. Focus onhaving a big step backwards, sitting deep, having an upright chest, straight front shin with the front knee directly over or wider than mid foot, and a flat front foot. This stretches the hips, often tight and pulled in footballers.

Lateral Lunges- 8 each leg. Lunge out to the side, having both sets of toes facing directly forwards, the outside leg straight and lead leg bent, sitting deep, with the chest up and the hips back.

Hamstring kick throughs- Swing the leg forwards and high, and back into the ground with a nice “dig.” 

Potentiate – 6-8 mins

Why? Phase three, arguably the most important, generates sharpness and improved speed and agility. A muscle will contract more quickly and powerfully if more has been asked of it previously. So, for example, we are quicker on our 4th – 5th match sprint in a match compared to our first. However, we can make sure we are quick on all of these sprints, providing we include some short explosive jumping and sprinting work at the end of our warm ups.

•  4-6 x 15 m Sprint races with 30 seconds – 1 minute minute recovery.
•  8-10 reps of explosive vertical jumps, with a solid, strong landing, and short rest between each one.
• 8-10 reps of explosive broad (forward) jumps, with a solid, strong landing short rest between each oneo 1-2 sets of 10 continuous pogo jumps- go for maximum height, and being as quick off the ground as possible, and getting tall, with the toes into the shins in the air. Max Height/Minimum ground contact time.