Warm Up Ideas - Top 5 Warm Ups

  March 25, 2019

As we covered before, warm ups are absolutely key and an essential part of any training session or fixture preparations. You can read our guide to warm ups here, but if you’re looking for some inspiration and some warm up ideas then read on as we highlight our favourite warm ups, both with and without the ball.

Conductor and Orchestra – Warm Up Without a Ball

The players start facing you and must listen and react to your instructions and move in the relevant directions.

Call the following instructions:

• Forward
• Sidesteps to the left
• Sidesteps to the right
• Backwards
• Jockey forwards
• Jockey backwards
• Turn and sprints

You can also introduce some dynamic stretches such as high knees and heel flicks to really get the blood pumping and muscles loosened off.

Dribble and Movements – Warm Up with a Ball Each

Set up a small playing area and start your players dribbling a ball each around the area using various skills and turns.

On your whistle, they must leave their balls and make various movements to each ball such as:

• High knees
• Heel flicks
• Sidesteps
• Short springs
• Jockeying forwards
• Jockeying backwards
• Step overs on the ball
• Inside ball touches
• Outside of the foot ball touches

The players are free to choose the movements that they make but they must change after each ball they pass.

On your second whistle, the players collect a ball and continue to dribble.

Gates – Pairs – Warm Ups with a Ball Between Two

Arrange your players in pairs.

The pairs of players must try to make as many passes to each other through as many gates as they can in a set time period.

The player in possession must look up to see which gate their partner has run to.

The pair with the most gate passes in a set period of time are declared the winners. 

Red Light, Green Light – Group Warm Ups

The players must react to your call.

• Green light – the players run forward
• Amber light – players jog on the spot
• Red light – the players must stand still

Any players caught doing the wrong movement are sent back to the starting position. 

Strength and Power – Warm Up Circuits

Arrange the players in pairs and tell them to react to your whistle.

• Whistle 1 – the players sprint into the first area and battle to hold each other off.
• Whistle 2 – the players sprint into the second area and again battle to hold each other off.
• Whistle 3 – the players react and sprint to get a first time shot at goal.

The players then become servers.

The servers now jog back to the starting position.

The whistles work on a conveyor-belt effect. On each whistle a new pair is entering an area that the previous pair has just left.

• Coaching
• Education