Warm It Up

Warm up is a key component of every successful training regime. It is also the most often neglected and poorly done. Warm up is as important, if not more important, than the workout itself. Key components of a good warm up should do exactly that....warm you up. However, warm ups can be so much more. Coaches and athletes need to spend as much time thinking about warm ups as they do thinking about the workout plans themselves.

A good warm up should be full of functional movement, skills, drills and even some types of stretches. It should allow you to work on areas of weakness while prepping yourself for the activity to come. You can also use warm ups to work on fixing imbalances, flexibility issues or developing skills.

Warm ups should be different every day. Although there will be key elements that rotate through on a regular basis, the warm up will always be dictated by the WOD and the individual athletes needs. Elements of your warm up should reflect the movements that are coming on that day. Break movements down into individual pieces allowing you to practice pieces of the WOD skills without actually going into the WOD. Infuse the areas we talked about above to work on areas of need and finish with a compressed version of the actual workout itself using different implements such as dowels, weighted dowels and metal rods all the way through to empty Olympic bars. By the end of the warm up you should be mentally and physically ready to go. The WOD should be ingrained into your head. Ensuring that athletes are focused and ready to participate is the primary responsibility of the coach. Coaches need to ensure that during warm ups that athletes are not just going through the motions. Poor warm up technique creates poor workout technique, which equals out to poor athletes and poor performances.

As I eluded to before, the responsibility of the coach in warm up is often an overlooked area. The coach needs to use that warm up time to circulate through his/her athletes and ensure everyone is healthy and has no nagging injuries they are hiding. A time to touch base with your athletes, have some one on one time and make sure everything is going the way it supposed to be. This also is an excellent primary teaching time where coaches should take advantage of the slower pace to refine athlete skills and techniques, make adjustments and change warm ups to specifically hit the needs of that athlete. Athletes should have similar yet different warm ups from each other based on their own needs and skill levels. Once the pressure of WOD completion is implemented it is difficult to coach and refine the skills of athletes as they are focused on accomplishing the workout and not on skill development. By then, your teaching time is done.

Take time to warm up properly and make it a focus time where you prepare to get work done!
WOD

A Little Less Air Force

2 Burpees to start and then 2 burpees on the minute every minute

For Time

Guys @ 75 Gals @ 45

20 Thrusters

20 SDHP

20 Push Jerk

20 OHS

20 Front Squat