My Warm Up Guide

Other Sports Soccer
1

My warm up routine for soccer, lifting, speed work, tempo, light skill work (everything that I do basically). Any feedback would be appreciated. This would also be good for myself to reference to :smiley:

The Warm Up

General – Should be low intensity to warm up the body and prepare the joints and muscles for action

Low impact activity to get the blood flowing (3-5 min) (Jog a lap etc.)

Joint mobility
Neck circles slow, then neck movement left, right, up and down with hand as resistance. The neck circles faster.
Wrist and elbow joint mobility (air hammer curls, wrist rotations) Should just take a couple of sec.
Shoulder circles, move shoulders left and right using your shoulder blades
Thoracic mobility (cat-camel, reach through backhand, rainbows in that order)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weLcono-BT0 (2:24 shows cat-camel, 3:36 shows reach through backhand, 4:12 shows rainbows)
Hip circles
Knee mobility – stand up and hold onto some pole or something and bring your leg up and gently kick out forward, to left, to right. Do it on both legs couple of times. This is to get the knee joint mobile. That’s it.
Ankle mobility - up and down against the wall, and also gentle side leg swings with a knee bend focusing on transverse ankle motion while foot stays on the ground and not move. You will see your foot twitch left to right but try to keep your heel and toe on the ground and not let your foot move in a different direction.

A and B marches (just marching)
A March:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8il_EjiBWQ
B March:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl8EasFDRKI

Muscular activation (to activate the core and muscles and body and raise the temperature)
Bridge – contract for like 5 sec. do reps until you feel good activation and are primed
Bird dog - contract for like 5 sec. do reps until you feel good activation and are primed
Side leg abduction – some reps on each leg
Push ups
Squats
Lunges, walking lunges, walking lunges with twist (remember we are just activating the muscles, not doing reps and reps and working out)
Heel toe walk (muscular activation for shin and calves)

Dynamic warm up (to dynamically move the body through full range of motion and get ready for the workout in top condition and temperature raised. Again this is low intensity)

Some skipping (skips with various shoulder circles and upper body mobility stuff while skipping)
Side skipping and side shuffling
Open the gate, close the gate, knee to chest and kick out, inside of the foot tap
Butt kicks, Butt kicks to side, straight leg run
Cariocas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyDVWjqi3CA
Leg swings, leg swings with a twist (again be controlled with the swings)

This warm up should make you feel loose, confident, and ready to go to more specific warm up or if it’s low intense work like tempo then you can do your tempo now.

Lifting specific warm up:
Again when you do your warm up sets, there should be no signs of working hard to make your muscle muscles fatigued a little or something. You are just doing enough to prime your CNS to move heavy weights. So when you start off with squats you start off with the bar (and since you are kg we will move in kg increments). The bar is 20 kg. (You should move your warm up sets in no more than 10 kg on each side of the bar, so 20 kg. in total) Say you were going to squat 80 kg. Your first warm up set would be the bar x 5 reps. You would only need 2 more warm up sets for this weight. So your next warm up set would be 40 kg. (10 kg. plate on each side) x 3 reps. Then your next warm up set would be 60kg (20 kg. plate on each side) x 1-2 reps. Then after this your CNS should be prime and ready for lift off. Blast those work sets and have a good lift! Although this lifting would warm up your cns and body well for other lifts I would still do something like RDLs in this way because that’s a very technical lift and requires a lot of focus in the upper body to not let your back round, keeping your chest up, using your traps for the lift so the bar doesn’t move away from the body. For something like weighted pull ups or overhead press your starting weight is very low so you can warm up with doing the motion in air or with some machine to work those muscles and doing 1-2 reps of bodyweight pull up for the weighted pull up or just the bar for the overhead press. This is because your body is well warmed up by doing those heavy squats and RDLs in the beginning (even your upper body). So just practicing the warm up for perfect technique and a bit of specific muscular activation while doing the lift is enough but you don’t want it so that the warm up sets for overhead press or pull ups take away any energy for your work sets. The same thing applies for rows or benching or any lift of course. Doing warm up sets to build up would be necessary in 10-20 kg weight differences from your warm up sets to your work sets. Neither mine nor yours I suppose shoulders are so strong that you can already overhead press so much or pull up with so much weight increments.

Ballwork specific-warm up – ball mastery and various touches with the ball and getting comfortable with all parts of the foot, juggling.
Sprint warm up
A and B skips – a few reps (2-3?) of 10m. of these until you are ready. Walk back for recovery.
Another vid showing them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcWsOM144xo
Countermovement Standing Vertical jumps - 2 sets of 5 reps
High intensity soccer dribbling for 5-10 minutes in 10-20m distance? (make sure you are recovered between your dribbles and not out of breath or in any way tired or fatigued. You don’t want your sprint workout to suffer either. Just do it as a last part of warm up, but it would be more intense as you are trying to go with speed with the ball.)
Take a break (3-5 min) and then go to build up to 2 progressive sprints of 75% and 85% and start your sprint workout.

Soccer match specific warm up
A and B skips
A few jumps (can also cover this with a partner throwing the ball to you and you doing a header back to you, but make sure you elevate to your peak and head the ball there).
Build up acceleration across 5-10m. (75% and 85%). Save the 95%+ for the match.
Some agility movements (changing directions in open space just to feel the groove and getting ready for the match in tip-top condition).
Warm up with the ball to make sure your touch and movement is top notch. Now you are ready to kick ass.

2

Sounds good enough, the end goal is to allow maximum performance in maximum instructed ROM when you start the “meat” of the workout, which is the power section.
ROM being mobility and flexibility readiness
Performance being tone/CNS readiness.

What you may be missing is manual work in the form of massage or self- foam rolling, which is often most important at least for me.
Sometmes 20-30 reps of “rolls” or self massage with some boxing oil on a certain tight muscle before power can make all the difference.

3

Thanks for the thoughts. I used to do a lot of foam rolling but it didnt make much difference or maybe it was because i massaged when i was cold. So do you just apply the oil and massage before anything? I have muai thai boxing oil…it gives a nice temporary sensation

4

I personally don’t foam roll everything… But if I do a couple leg swings and a stride of 50m, I can tell what needs work… Usually it’s my low back, HF and calf.

If you have NO problems at all then you’re more durable than me so forget what I said hehe

5

Lol recently I’ve been having real good workouts and hardly having any soreness or tightness so I’m just lucky so far :smiley:

6

Of the A and B skips shown, I’d like to see the knee not coming up so high- there to be no collapsing or bending at the support knee or at the waist. Charlie’s Power Speed download is very useful. His interpretation of the Mach drills is not bastardized form you will find from many others.

7

I’ve got a Foamball, that is the same diameter as a foamlog - it’s brilliant for rolling glutes, hips, thighs and backs/arms
https://www.hartsport.com.au/products/6-746

The only Foamrolling device i found that works brilliantly for Calfs = your own knee. kneel on the ground, rest your chest on a bench or bed etc. use your opposite knee to place ontop of your calf muscle. You won’t really have to push at all. It really gets in down Deep. Absolutely the bee’s knee’s.

Otherwise - get some Cupping http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0&_nkw=cupping&_sacat=0&_from=R40

8

Sounds good I’ll make note of that when doing them.

9

Thoughts on this athlete?
//youtu.be/KfNqlXXMrZ4

I see very few athletes not bending at the support knee - I love the drills but usually prefer to stay away from them with team sport athletes and would rather perform general mobility/movement drills instead of shitty a/b skips.

What have you done to solve the collapsing of the support knee?

10

I don’t see much benefit with doing foam rolling before a speed/power session. How long does this warmup takes?

11

I guess you could use to loosen a tight muscle as you are warming up but I use the warm up itself to loosen the tight muscle. For my speed days the warm up takes around 30 minutes or so. It depends on how I am doing and when I feel ready and also the temperature outside, but it is cooler in the mornings ofcourse so I make sure I am ready.

12

What is your reasoning behind not using the drills for team athletes? I use the sprint sessions to improve my speed solely. I don’t do any specific work (save that for specific skill sessions and soccer games) except just the warm up where I do high intensity dribbling. So I try my best to train like a sprinter on those occasions and with proper mechanisms and everything.

13

Arm mechanics (non existent)
Foot lands way infront of centre of gravity
moving forwards way too fast

Perhaps he is a beginner ??

14

Looks ok to me

15

What about that support leg?

16

What is wrong with it