**Disclaimer: Let me make this REAL clear right off the jump. I am NOT saying that athletes don't need to warm up. I am also NOT saying that someone can sprint with no warm up. We all learned about that back with the red pill experiment debate from Keir and Joel and if you have not watched that you can click here and watch it.**

Now that is out of the way, let's get back to our regularly scheduled blog...Actually sorry, one more disclaimer. I don't know your room or your athletes. Maybe you do need a bit longer to warm up than I talk about here. Cool, do you. But what you will find in this blog is a way to get your athletes more warm, outside of the warm up.

I can make this blog real simple for you to read. Here is your answer - 10% of the time you have to train (Boyle, idk when he said it). Maybe it was the CSCCa conference that he spoke at. Or maybe it was one of his DVD sets. It could even be from one of the books he wrote. Either way, I can't get that 10% rule out of my head from Coach Mike Boyle. So this means for a training session that lasts one hour the warm up should only be six minutes. Chances are if you work in the private sector you are thinking to yourself that this makes sense. However, chances are if you work in the college setting you might not think this is enough. Let me explain....

This summer we were like clock work down to the exact minute with warm up, followed by speed, then weight room, and finally stretching, We even accounted for the walk from the field to the weight room. It all had to be calculated because we had another group coming in right after. We had it dialed in. Those of you working in college football are thinking DUH! We have a group coming in right after too. Bingo. You are right. But do you spend more than 10% of your time on the warm up? I don't know I am not in your room. Let me tell you three different stories about why this is important. Think of it like Goldilocks and the three bears.

Warm up That is Long

So back at Iowa during the off-season we would do a speed then lift. Or a lift then conditioning session. But, there were times when the players would do a speed, lift, then conditioning. A lot of work. We had the facility for it as there was little to no time wasted walking from location to location. We would truly maximize the 2 hours we were allowed to train the athletes. But our warm up was longer than 12 minutes. There would be foam rolling, stretching, band activation, ladder drills, and then a dynamic warm up all in one warm up. Now is this the end of the world? Not at all. But could it have been cut down? I think so. Did we need the ladder drills? Nah. Did we have to roll the entire body? Nope. So right there we can cut some time.

Warm up That is Short

On the flip side at Iowa there was days in-season when we only had 45 to 50 minutes to train a group before there was another group coming in. One of these such days we might have cut the warm up down a bit too short with maybe less than 5% training time on warm up. Athletes would do some mobility drills at the wall for their lower body and then hit a kettlebell complex that had around 5 different exercises in it. That was it then it was get on the lift. And usually this was a lower body lift day so we started with hang power cleans. Is this the end of the world and terrible warm up? No. Was I apart of it and not say anything. Yes. Did I know better? No. I learned and evolved.

Warm up That is Just Right

So now I am running my own room as the head football S&C at Towson and I have all those experiences with me from Iowa. I like all sorts of warm up routines. One that I really like that I learned from my former assistant Kyle Hashimoto was something that Moto learned from Zach Decant. Zach teaches an in place mobility drill followed by a traveling exercise. For instance have your athletes do six in place squats then do high knee carioca for 20 yards, then have athletes do lateral lunges three each side and high knee carioca 20 yards back. When you do something like this it helps keep the athletes engaged and ready to work.

In the weight room we would put different colored (and sized) bands on the ground along with a different plate. At our racks we would have three to four athletes training together. So we would prescribe five different exercises for the players to do at the rack. It might be something like:

Push up to down dog x10
Banded external rotation x10
Plate halo x5ea way
Overhead band pull apart x10
TRX Row x10

is this perfect? Nope. But it worked and got the players upper body ready to work for the training session. Ideas like this came from learning and observing while as an assistant at Iowa (which you need to do while an assistant wherever you are). It also came from visiting other staffs. Towson is right near The Naval Academy. Bryan Fitzpatrick is the Associate A.D. / Strength, Conditioning and Sports Performance for all 35 varsity sports programs at The Naval Academy. He also happened to be a Towson alumn. So I went to learn from him a few times (also something you need to do - go out and learn from people in person). He had limited time to train his players. So as he said, if it ain't critical it is out!

The Part That Makes it All Work

In my opinion the reason this 10% rule works is how you structure the rest of the training session. If you only warm up 10% of the time and then go right into hard drills and exercises that is not smart. That is NOT what I am saying. If you make the rest of training a gradual dial that is turned up with intensity you can do magic. Building off the above example of the upper body training day. Once that was over athletes would go to their A block. In the A block it would really be a continuation of the warm up. The first 2 sets of percentages would be lighter sets of the main movement, which to me really are the best warm up. Then the other exercises in the A block would help "support" or further mobilize tissues or joints that might limit ROM in the main movement. So if bench press was the A block main movement we would start at 50 or 60% 1RM and then go up to 60 or 70% 1RM while performing bent over rear dealt raises and cable face pulls. As a matter of fact this kind of warm up is what Dr. Kelly Starrett and I talked about on his episode of the CMW (click here to watch it). 

Putting it All Together

Hopefully this helped you. If not, my apologies and thanks for reading this far. Shout out Mike Boyle, Bryan Fitzpatrick, and Dr. Kelly Starrett for helping expand my knowledge. And shout out my former assistants Joe Alexander, Kyle Hashimoto, Zach Woodard, Kate Correia, and Carson Clark as we still talk and learn from one another to this day. The reason I am writing this blog was from a convo we had the other day. Make sure you are considering the time you are spending on the warm up. Does it have to be EXACTLY 10%. No. But should it be 20%? Also no. Be efficiant with your time for your athletes, staff, and coaches sake. And also for yours. Once you analyze your program and run an audit on how much time is being spent, hopefully you make some good changes.

Speaking of audit have you taken SCN's free career audit? Inside of this we help you analyze your own career of what your strengths and weakness are as a coach. SCN will help you look at your programming, relationships, networking, and more. Click here to take the free career audit from us at SCN and find out where you can grow and learn to best serve your organization.