The Power of Play: Creative Warmups to Ignite Athlete Performance

If you’re like me, getting started on a warmup can feel like pulling teeth. Don’t get me wrong, they are incredibly important when looking to set the tone for the work to come. Raising temperature, grooving the patterns and enhancing neural conductivity are a few key benefits for getting the most out of your workouts (read more about that here).

But yet, warm ups can feel boring. As beneficial as they are, too many of us run through them just to check the box; if they get dull, it’s hard for folks to put their full efforts to get the value. Our athletes sometimes feel this way.

As infantile as it sounds, people love to play. The competitiveness, the challenge and the unexpected are all more intriguing than hitting the same old line drills time and time again. What we’ve done recently is use our 7-10 minutes of warm up time as an opportunity to build in some play in order to raise core temperature, practice our patterns, increase neural conductivity AND get cognitive tactile benefits (problem solving).

Instead of boring you with science-ey jargon, I’ve put together a list of some movements, drills and games we implement to cover our warm up bases. These variations of play keep our athletes engaged while deriving high efforts and intent. Plus, it’s just fun. Yes, we still hit lighter load reps of our main exercises after, don’t worry. 

Crawling & Bridging

Great to bring people out of their comfort zone while opening up some planes of movement. You can be as creative as you’d like with these but here are a few drills we like:

  • Bear crawls in multiple directions
  • Crawls to crab bridges
  • Crawl to sprint
  • Partner bear crawl (pictured below)

Cat & Mouse 

Whether it be a straight sprint or a shuffle, having a “chase” component always keeps things fiery. Some examples include:

  • Push up start to sprint (partner starts 2 yards behind)
  • Mirror shuffle drill (be the partner’s shadow)
  • Supine turn to sprint (partner starts 2 yards behind)
  • 3-Cone gate drill (pictured below)

Tag 

Ah yes, a classic schoolyard staple. Put your athletes in a 5×5 yard box and watch the magic happen. We’ll mix up contact and no-contact depending on the day; a few of our favourites include:

  • 1v1
  • 2v1
  • 3v1
  • 1v1 w/ contact (pictured below)

Lacrosse Ball Games

Who would’ve guessed a small bouncy ball could lead to some incredible warm up games. We’ll use lacrosse balls for races, catch & release drills and even some wall ball (another schoolyard staple). For some drills, we’ll even throw in a couple balls at once to really get the gears going. Some variations include:

  • Lane race to catch the ball in less bounces
  • Shuffle to throw and catch (can put restrictions like “left hand only”)
  • Shuttle race with ball on cone grabs
  • 1v1 spike ball w/ hoop
  • 1v1 wall ball (pictured below)

In Summary

Your creative mind is the limit for bringing play into your prep work. The variations are endless for modifying any of the above drills for any population, whether it be teams, small groups or even yourself. Go have fun and get to work!

Matrixx 

PS: Here’s a bonus video of a simple way to progress your lateral ball catch drills!

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