You ever seen a professional sport’s game.  Or if you live in Columbus, did you go to the Ohio State football game this Saturday night? If you went an hour early, you probably saw the football players going through a pretty extensive warmup.

A general warmup, then more specific drills, then drills for their position.

What you didn’t see is them arriving on the field 15 minutes before game time, with a couple of them running late. You didn’t see them doing some static stretches, throw the football for a couple tosses, then get ready to rock and roll.

With our youth athletes, why do we have such awful warmups for them?  

They still need to get as prepared for their sports as older athletes. Yet for some reason with these younger athletes (ages 4-13), we want them to show up just before game time to not inconvenience the parents or for another reason I can’t think of similar to that.

If you are told to come 15 minutes or less before your athlete’s game, then follow these directions. Your athlete might not be the best athlete on the field because of it, but we certainly will be able to rule out that he/she was NOT properly warmed up beforehand.

  • You need to have your athlete arrive at minimum 30 minutes prior to the start of the game.
  • If your athlete isn’t ready to go 30 minutes ahead of time (shoes on, uniform ready, gone to the bathroom), then get their earlier and all that taken care of so at the 30 minute mark, the kid is ready to do his warmup.
  • Start with a short jog, jumping jacks, something easy but active to get the blood flowing.
  • Then start doing some dynamic movement drills – high knees, butt kicks, walking arm swings, walking toe touches, skips for height/distance, duck walks, inchworms, walking lunges, or knee hugs are great to put into the drill.
  • I would then do some short sprints, like suicides, but something that could be specific to your sport. For example, a basketball player might do a sprint up to half court, back pedal to the foul line, sprint up to the other foul line, then side shuffle to half court, etc.
  • With any remaining time, do some static stretching for areas you think are still tight, then stay loose.

Even though they are young, you still want to put them in the best possible position to have a good game. Please follow these guidelines for these young tykes, even if it is for a simple rec game. They can still get injured just like the older kids and ultimately we want them to have as much fun as possible and it isn’t fun being hurt.

Photo courtesy of Jim Larrison on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/larrison/