Warm-Up 101

A lot of coaches aren't accountable for the warm-up.

Every single exercise is an opportunity to ingrain good movement, or to allow subpar movement to slip past.

The warm-up needs to be task-specific, and designed to prepare the athlete to either optimally train or optimally perform.

The warm-up is the best time to do "correctives." It's a great opportunity on a daily basis to ingrain good movement patterns.

It's an uphill battle though, and here's why:

The body likes to do what's it good at doing, even if it means cementing bad patterns.

In my experience, the vast majority of warm-ups completely ignore this concept (think general warm-ups where everyone does the same thing).

Charlie Weingroff is fond of saying, "Get long, get strong." and it's a great philosophy for the warm-up. Here's a template for how we warm-up

1. Improve tissue extensibility and joint range of motion
2. Follow this up with warm-up exercises that are going to create some good stability in that newfound, transient ROM
3. Then you'll get into your training session and accumulate some volume and strength in that new pattern and range, and hopefully that becomes the new normal.

I'll close with this sentence once again: Every single rep you coach is an opportunity to ingrain good movement, or to continue to allow aberrant movement to slip past.