When coaches talk about how important the warmup is to a session, the result is often a bit of a mental snooze button.
Why?
Because typically, warmups center around the following (all important things by the way):
- Increasing muscle temperature
- Dynamic mobility
- Muscle activation (used in the traditional sense of the word, this is the least important component)
- Rehearsal and progressive buildup to the main exercise of the day
Why is this typically a bit of a snooze-fest? Because much of it is “manufactured”. It’s a man-made system of doing something the body can and should do on its own in a natural situation.
What is a “natural” situation?
Take for example, playing pick up basketball before you want to do some dunks; this is the prime example of what I’m talking about.
No other warmup in existence is like it.
No other warmup can prepare an athlete to jump quite as high.
No combination of monster band walks or multi-directional lunges or skips or sprint drills will produce the height you can get up in after a few good games of pickup ball.
This isn’t just about basketball either, it’s about anything. It’s about preparing the body to be at its absolute best for the task at hand.
It’s about getting all systems on board.
So what does a basketball game have in it that a typical warmup doesn’t? Here is a short list:
- Reaction to stimulus (visual, audio, kinesthetic)
- Maximal velocity and effort based work
- High density of efforts
- Substantial increase in muscle temperature
- Competition with an opponent
- A very high number of joint manipulations based on playing on offense, and especially defense (waking up muscles based on joints moving extremely quickly and through a large range of motion)
- Subconscious and instinctive movement as opposed to man-made coaching ideas in typical warmup movements
- A substantially higher amount of work being done veruss a typical warmup
All this being said, we could summarize the type of warmup being achieved ina game of basketball as a fun, movement dense, reactive, organic and spontaneuous.
In the sense of specificity (jumping) there is a lot of it in a pickup basketball game if you look the relationship of gait and various forms of running and moving on the court to setting up a jump, as well as the variety of jumps that happen within a pickup game (the majority of which are not maximal in the sense of maximal height).
With this all being said, some basic thoughts for improving the process by which we warm our athletes up could encapsulate some of the following:
- More spontaneity on the end of the coach, keep things new and therefore more challenging to the athlete so they don’t get to bored within a routine
- More demanding work in the muscle temperature, aerobic and movement variety sense in the warmup section
- More coordination challenges in the warmup section versus the actual workout section
So what does this look like in practicality?
Something like:
45 minutes of pickup basketball then 15 minutes of “Easy Strength “ lifting
Or
Warming up with a variety of crawls and rolls, in hurdle dyamics and then variable bounding and partner agility runs, working off of different start positions. Finish with 15-20 minutes of heavier lifting.
Or
10 minutes of steady temperature work, moving into 40 minutes of French Contrast training, with early rounds and sets of a submaximal effort and higher variety, with final sets being more intense.
Or
15-20 minutes of pushups, lunges, crawls, rolls and grappling before team sport practice (Jeremy Frisch style)
I wouldn’t say the warmup has to be like this every single training session, but shades of all this exist in the scope of what you are doing. If nothing else, a 15-20 minute intuitive warmup with dense, reactive and spontaneous elements, rolling through a 30 minute lift, and then doing a 10 minute finisher as a team (such as isometrics, loaded carries, sled relay, etc.) can really enhance a 1 hour training session that could otherwise be a bit boring, over-coached, and lacking in the elements that ignite the human body in dynamic performance.
Of course, if an athlete is heavy in their own sport practice and training at this point, then these warmups can become much more miniature versions of what they are, or absolved almost completely since the sport play should fulfill the reactive elements (although I still like putting in some basic crawl and lunge style elements in the warmup still at this point).
About Joel Smith
Joel Smith, MS, CSCS is a NCAA Division I Strength Coach working in the PAC12 conference. He has been a track and field jumper and javelin thrower, track coach, strength coach, personal trainer, researcher, writer and lecturer in his 8 years in the professional field. His degrees in exercise science have been earned from Cedarville University in 2006 (BA) and Wisconsin LaCrosse (MS) in 2008. Prior to California, Joel was a track coach, strength coach and lecturer at Wilmington College of Ohio. During Joel’s coaching tenure at Wilmington, he guided 8 athletes to NCAA All-American performances including a national champion in the women’s 55m dash. In 2011, Joel started Just Fly Sports in an effort to bring relevant training information to the everyday coach and athlete. Aside from the NSCA, Joel is certified through USA Track and Field and his hope is to bridge the gap between understandable theory and current coaching practices.
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