![A person pulls up with both hands while holding handles connected to flexible bands anchored to the floor.](/sites/default/files/2024-07/240710_HF_2H.png)
How To Warm Up Correctly Before Playing Different Sports
July 10, 2024
When you see professional athletes gearing up to race or getting ready to take the field, you’ll notice that they’re always in motion. That’s because they are warming up in preparation for going all out.
And there’s a good reason why you’ll never see a pro go straight from the bench into a full sprint. “You need to allow your muscles to gradually accept the demands of your activity,” says Jennifer Burnham, a certified athletic trainer at Henry Ford Health. “Otherwise you risk causing an injury.”
Why You Should Warm Up
As the name implies, a warmup is a series of movements designed to warm up your muscles. “You want to increase blood flow to your muscles and loosen up and lubricate your joints,” says Burnham. “And you need to do it gradually, so that your body has time to adapt to the increasing intensity.”
Warming up involves more than just stretching. According to Burnham, studies have actually shown that holding a static stretch when muscles are cold can decrease performance. “Instead, before activity you want to do a dynamic warmup that incorporates movement as well as some gentle stretching."
Your warmup only needs to take 5 to 10 minutes. When deciding what to do, think about the movements you’ll be doing in your activity and which muscles and joints are most involved. Then choose movements that slowly get them warmed up and primed for more intense action.
How To Warm Up For Different Activities
No matter your sport, the warmup before your workout should include some exercises to activate and engage your core (the abdominal and back muscles). “Waking up those muscles helps decrease injury potential,” says Burnham. She suggests incorporating bridges and mini squats (no deeper than 45 degrees) into your warmup routine. To do a bridge, lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor. Tighten your stomach muscles and squeeze your butt as you lift your hips up to form a straight line from knees to shoulders.
The rest of your warmup can be more specific to muscles and movements of your planned activity.
Running
Before a run, or even a jog, you want to warm up all the muscles and joints from the waist down.
- Rotate your hips (lift your knee up and do some circles in both directions to move the joint) and ankles (circle one foot at a time both clockwise and counter-clockwise).
- Get powerful muscles like your glutes and quads ready with high knees and butt kicks.
- Walk on your toes and then on your heels to warm up shin and calf muscles.
- When you’re ready to run, start off slowly and gradually increase your speed.
Racquet sports
You still need to warm up your lower body using the same moves as the running warmup. But you’ll want to add in others specific to the upper body movements of tennis, pickleball or other racket sports.
- Warm up shoulders with big arm circles both forwards and backwards
- Circle your hands in both directions to get wrists ready for action
- Lunge forward and rotate your upper torso to increase your spine mobility
Basketball, soccer and football
You want to make sure your lower body has time to adapt to the demands of sports that require bursts of sprinting and quick shifts of direction. Your warmup should gradually increase in speed and intensity as you move your body in all directions:
- Side shuffles while swinging your arms (shuffle in both directions)
- Grapevines in both directions
- Skip forward, lifting knees high, then skip backward
Swimming
Prepping your body for a swimming workout means warming up your arms, shoulders and upper back.
- Circle arms backwards and forwards
- Use a light resistance band to do shoulder rows
- Use a light resistance band or light dumbbell and lift straight arms up to shoulder height in front and to your sides
- Start with an easy tempo freestyle swim before going into more dynamic strokes like butterfly
Jennifer Burnham is an athletic trainer who sees patients at the Henry Ford Center for Athletic Medicine in Detroit.
To find a sports medicine provider at Henry Ford Health, visit henryford.com/athletes or call 313-651-1969.
![Bloomingdale trainer Scott Allison has several tasks as he works to keep the school’s student-athletes healthy and pain-free.](/sites/default/files/2022-11/221122_Allison_2H.jpg)
Bloomingdale Trainer Performing Invaluable Role in Keeping Athletes Playing
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
November 22, 2022
BLOOMINGDALE — If Scott Allison looks bored during one of Bloomingdale’s sporting events, that is a good thing.
“Trainers like to be behind the scenes and in the shadows,” the certified athletic trainer said. “We’re only needed in emergencies.
“It’s one of those jobs that if we’re sitting around looking bored, then things are going well.”
But if an athlete goes down with an injury, Allison is quick to run onto the court or field.
In his first year at Bloomingdale, he has found that working with middle and high school students is a lot different than his previous work with the minor-league hockey Kalamazoo Wings.
Treating the hockey team, with whom he spent much of his 22 years, “There was a lot of traumatic stuff like lacerations or deep contusions, overuse injuries like hip flexors or core injuries or broken bones.
“Everything’s acute and fast. It’s a different animal. In hockey, they’re all pro athletes so they know their bodies really well.”
However, high school and middle school athletes are still in a growing phase.
“These kids don’t really know what’s going on a lot of times, so it’s a lot more education on what’s happening,” Allison said.
“Is it an injury, or is it just soreness? You get a lot of kids that don’t understand the difference between aches and pains or an injury. We see a lot of ankle sprains or shin splints because they’re just developing. They’re in that awkward range where their bodies try to grow too fast.”
Allison is the Cardinals’ first certified athletic trainer, a new position for which athletic director Jason Hayes campaigned.
“What we notice is that if a kid’s injured, they’re out a lot less if you have a trainer because it speeds up recovery time,” said Hayes, who also coaches varsity football and is an assistant wrestling coach. “It’s like having a built-in physical therapist on your staff, too.”
Studies support Hayes’ statements.
According to information from The Sports Institute at University of Washington, “‘The athletic trainers know the athletes,” says Stan Herring, M.D., cofounder of The Sports Institute at (University of Washington) Medicine and a team physician for the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Mariners. “They see the athletes frequently, if not every day. They know when something is wrong. They are medical professionals who evaluate, treat and rehabilitate athletes.’”
The article continued: “Three recent studies suggest that athletic trainers are linked to significant improvements in the diagnosis of concussion in young athletes and significant reductions in ‘time-loss’ injuries that require athletes to take time away from sports.”
Allison sees himself as a teacher as well as a trainer.
“We see a lot more strains or growth issues,” he said. “A lot of it is maintenance and teaching kids what’s going on with their bodies or what they need to do to change things.”
He also meets with parents and coaches to talk about the best way to prevent injuries.
Allison’s day begins about 1:30 or 2 p.m., giving athletes a chance to talk with him before practices or games.
During the action, he always has his first aid backpack filled with the basics: air splints for fractures or dislocations, AED, EpiPens, and bench kits (with taping and bandaging supplies, splints, gauze, ACE wraps, ice bags, latex gloves and other basic first aid supplies.)
He travels with the teams when they are involved in high-impact sports, such as football, and many times he is also called to treat an opposing player if that team has no trainer.
Allison is a perfect fit with Bloomingdale, Hayes said.
His wife, Kirsten, coached the Cardinals girls basketball team for seven years. His daughter Emma, now at Glen Oaks Community College, graduated from there, and his daughter Bailey is an eighth grader.
“We are a very lucky town,” Hayes said. “We had Doc (Robert) Stevens, who had been volunteering as our athletic trainer for 15 years. He’s just aging out.
“About a year ago, he came to me and said that it was his last year. Scott has 22 years experience, and he has relationships here. To me, it was a no-brainer.”
Assistant varsity football coach Lance Flynn, who also coaches the middle school football team, saw Allison in action during competition in the fall.
“First quarter in a middle school football game, a kid broke his arm,” Flynn said. “My own son, Ryder, was on the varsity team and he sprained his AC socket and Scott took care of him.
“If something happens during a game, they can go see him and I don’t have to worry much because I know they’re in good hands.”
Allison’s affiliation with Bronson Sports Medicine is also a plus, the trainer said.
“With Bronson, we can offer a lot more and expedite getting in to see doctors or specialists if we need to,” he said. “We’re on the same system as the doctors, so we can diagnose and send notes to the doctors and they can send notes back to us.
“If there’s anybody we need to keep track of with the doctors, I can talk with the doctors and figure out how that’s going. If anybody needs to see me, they know I’m here early if they just want to come down to talk.”
Bronson also provides certified athletic trainers at 21 other southwest Michigan high schools: Brooke Vandepolder (Battle Creek Central), Lindsay Aarseth-Lindhorst (Climax-Scotts), Amanda Monsivaes (Comstock), Makenzie Hodgson (Delton Kellogg), Salvador Robles-Soriano (Gobles), Holly Ives (Richland Gull Lake), Katelyn Baker-Contreras (Kalamazoo Hackett Catholic Prep), Lizzy Smith (Kalamazoo Central), Emma Beener (Kalamazoo Christian), Holly Sisson (Kalamazoo Loy Norrix), Nico Talentino (Mattawan), Aaron Eickhoff (Otsego), Quincey Powell (Parchment), Malorie Most (Paw Paw), Jessica Bakhuyzen (Plainwell), Lance LeTourneau (Portage Central), Janelle Currie (Portage Northern), Carrie Calhoun (Schoolcraft), Chelsea Harrison (South Haven), Alexis Walters (Three Rivers) and Natalie McClish (Vicksburg).
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Bloomingdale trainer Scott Allison has several tasks as he works to keep the school’s student-athletes healthy and pain-free. (Middle) Bloomingdale athletic director Jason Hayes, left, and assistant varsity football coach Lance Flynn. (Below) Allison packs his bag for another full afternoon. (Ankle-taping photo by Andreya Robinson; all other photos by Pam Shebest.)