3 Considerations For Effective Sprint Warm-Ups
Last week, a colleague and I put together a compact speed session template and loaded it onto Instagram. You can see it here.
“How to make the most out of a 20-minute sprint session” is one of my most-viewed posts of the month, demonstrating the relevance of this topic once again to my audience of strength coaches and youth athletes.
If there’s one thing we sport scientists and coaches know for sure from experience, it is that there is never enough time to do everything we want or need to do during the season. Whether its because we have to sacrifice our time to sport coaches and technical training sessions or simply because players also only have so many hours and so much energy on a given day, it’s critical to be strategic with our time and training when possible.
Every week in Wieseck, I run at least two 20-30min speed sessions and a few 30min strength sessions. It’s all I get and we make it work. Turns out: managing time, energy, and athlete load well but still getting in high-quality work each week really does lower injury risks and, interestingly, overuse injuries too.
I find that the most important aspect is planning the rest times, even in a compact session. For example, if we have 20 minutes and we know that 30-50m maximum effort, maximum velocity sprints require 3-5min rest per repetition, we can pretty quickly accept that a MaxVelo session is not the best use of our very short time. Instead, note where the rest times are shorter but effort is still high; most short speed sessions are planned for acceleration work over 10-20 meters, with 1-2min rest per sprint repetition. We can get more reps in and fill the time with more than just 4 reps and 10-15 minutes of rest.
But this is about the sprint warm-up.
Even in an expedited, compact session, the warm-up has to be thorough and purposeful, at best a strategical combination of factors.
I take three points into consideration when planning any speed-day warm-ups, but especially a short one.
#1: Whole-Body Work
I personally find it shortsighted to only warm up the lower body. As sone of the most aggressive things the human body can do, maximal sprinting requires the entire body to contribute.
The arms pump. The torso rotates to accomodate the contralateral frontside mechanics.
The legs drive down, expressing force against the ground to project us forward.
We build those aspects into the warmup as well, as the goal of a warmup is to prepare for the goals and content of the session.
PRESCRIPTION: World’s greatest stretch, zombie kicks, arm swings, anything else that gets the body moving together - and seperately
#2: Raise Body Temp & HR
Raising body temperature is a crucial aspect of preparation to train or compete - always! We build in movements that increase blood flow to muscles and raise the body's core temperature, which prepares the muscles for strenuous, max effort activity. This increased blood flow delivers vital oxygen and nutrients to the muscles, helping to prevent fatigue and speed up recovery during the already-short breaks.
This aspect, however, seems to be so simple to skip over in extreme weather scenarios. When it is freezing outside, we don’t want to be out there any longer than we have to and any movement makes us “feel warm” - but we are likely still not adequately prepared to train or perform with a low injury risk without purposefully raising HR and core temp before high effort work!
PRESCRIPTION: 200m jog before warmup, skips, high knees
#3: Emphasize Rhythm
Especially before a sprint session, this piece is critical. As this session has to be short, we won’t have the time to really invest a block of time on technical drilling. I would usually run a basic A-Series block with some dribbling and hip projection work in an hour-long session, but this needs to be expedited. The technical piece is going into the warm-up!
PRESCRIPTION: Skips with arm swing, high knees, A-march, A-switch, Pogos
———
If you would like to hear me break down every piece of the warm-up and power/plyo section of our workout, including explanations for each exercise, check out this video!