The Importance of a Good Warm Up
Warming up is a chance to improve your fitness, strength, power, and mobility in whatever your chosen sport is. In addition to physically preparing the body, a warm up allows an athlete to see how their body is feeling, and get the mind right for competition or the session ahead.
Photo by Charlie Hayams
What The Warm Up Should Do For The Athlete
Every warm up should have a set routine that the athlete can perform on their own. This structure of movements and/or drills should not only improve the athlete physically but also offer some mental calmness to bring the athlete into the present, which will be especially useful before competition when the athlete may be in a new environment. Having a familiar routine that elicits a calm and ready state of mind is crucial in reducing performance anxiety, however this will not happen unless the athlete has been practising their warm up for some time before the competition.
In short, the warm up is an opportunity both for the athlete to improve and also time for them to get their game face on. Over time, the warm up can become more complex, longer, and specific to the individual.
What To Do For the Warm Up
Following the very basic principle of RAMP (raise, activate, mobilise and potentiate)…
Raise – Skipping I find is a good primer for boxing and as most boxing clubs and boxers do a large amount of skipping, it should get them in that ready state of mind we were talking about earlier. It is also a low level plyometric with a very good carry over to the boxing stance (jockeying) as well as helping with hand-foot coordination. Boxers should be encouraged to try variations of skipping; in stance skipping, high knees, swapping feet and so on, so they can continue to develop their coordination.
Activate – For both senior and junior boxers I would recommend point based games, something that will get the athletes concentrating, moving their bodies in a variety of ways, and enjoying themselves. Patball, net ball, tag, 5 a side football, shoulder and knee tag ect, these games are up to you. For senior athletes that are past their superman years approaching their mid 20s, they should be doing the standard activation work before playing these games to prevent injury – crab walks, band work for shoulders, isometrics and so on.
Mobilise – This is a great opportunity for an athlete or coach to get a sense of how one is doing. Someone might be tired and might not know it until they are struggling to find balance in reverse lunges or overhead squats, something they normally do without thinking. An athlete might feel discomfort in an injury they thought was much more healed or vice versa they might fly through their mobilising and be feeling much better than they thought. These movements should be helping and improving how freely the joints are moving generally and specifically to the sport.
Potentiation – Firing up the central nervous system. In boxing, this will translate to moving fast. We want to get the motor signals firing to the muscles, something very specific and easy to do – for example, try shadow boxing with light weights (0.5kg or 1kg weights is plenty, 1kg should only be used with heavier weight category fighters – super middle and up) and then shadow without the weights. Your hands will naturally feel like they are flying, this is called post activation potentiation. Another way to potentiate the body is max effort body weight jumps and for upper body med ball throws or explosive push ups are very effective (no more than 5, sets of 2 – 3 with long breaks in-between as we are pushing for max effort and won’t be able to achieve this without long break in-between). As well as being a very effective warm up we are also building up on volume over time with our plyometric and ballistic work which will have a direct cross over into the boxing: more explosive footwork, punching harder and more volume.
The Aim is Always Improvement
This is just the basic RAMP principle with some examples of what I do/have done. Warm ups should be creative and specific to age groups, and eventually specific to the athlete once you get to know yourself or them better. But the goal is simple, and that is to improve in the warm up and therefore in the ring.
