Looking for an effective, evidence-based warm up to improve your sprinting performance? we’ve got you covered.
This article takes you through some of our favourite warm-up exercises tailored specifically for your sprint training sessions. We’ve used these with a bunch of our athletes, and the results have been really good.
we’ll be giving you some of our dynamic mobility drills, activation techniques, and an overall warm up layout that can be taken directly from this page to the track.
Let’s get you sprinting faster…
BENEFITS OF AN S&C WARM UP
A structured warm-up is a fundamental aspect of athletic preparation, offering numerous advantages that will enhance your performance and reduce the risk of injuries.
- Injury Prevention: Effective warm-ups work to lower your injury risk by improving your joint flexibility, muscle elasticity, and tissue resilience. Using dynamic exercises like leg swings and lunges enhance blood flow, oxygenation, and nutrient delivery to our muscles, helping prevent injury.
- Activation drills targeting specific muscle groups further reduce the likelihood of overuse injuries and imbalances, increasing your overall injury resilience.
- Muscle Potentiation: It’s been shown that a structured warm-up will optimize your muscle function, leading to more efficient movements and increased force generation. Plyometric exercises stimulate rapid and powerful muscle contractions which will boost your force output on the track.
- Improved Performance: Using a thorough and sport specific warm-up will help improve your neuromuscular readiness which will benefit your overall performance by increasing speed, agility, stride length and stride frequency.
- Recovery: An effective warm-up strategy will aid in both mid and post-exercise recovery, reducing muscle soreness and improving range of motion.
ANATOMY OF THE PERFECT WARM-UP
An inappropriate warm-up could be detrimental, negatively affecting your strength. In the case of sprinting and sprint training sessions your warm-up should always aim to increase your power.
Typically a perfect warm-up will prepare your entire body for the task ahead, in the case of sprint training specifically targeting your key muscle groups guarantees readiness for explosive power and proper running mechanics.
KEY MUSCLES FOR SPRINTING
Lower Body:
- Quadriceps: Prepare for explosive knee extension and power during sprints.
- Hamstrings: Improve flexibility, stride recovery and prevent strains during sprinting.
- Calves: Enhance ankle mobility and push-off power during sprinting.
- Hip Flexors: Improves your hip mobility and stride length during sprints.
- Glutes: Ensures proper hip extension and propulsion during sprinting.
Upper Body:
- Shoulders: For arm swing coordination, balance, and generating momentum during sprints.
- Upper Back: Supporting proper posture, helping with arm swing coordination, and contribute to overall upper body stability during your sprints.
- Arms (Biceps, Triceps, Forearms): Crucial for generating arm swing power, maintaining your balance, and supporting your overall upper body coordination during sprints.
Before delving into the specifics of your new favourite warm-up, it’s important to understand what the objective of each stage is and how that will make a difference.
Most high and elite level sprinters have a similar warm-up layout comprised of three distinct phases, with each stage helping to improve the next one ending with you being prepared for maximal effort and minimal injury risk.
R.A.M.P WARM-UP
- Raise/Rate: Increase your heart rate and temperature, typically through low impact cardio exercises, The goal is to increase blood flow to muscles and prepare the cardiovascular system for more intense exercise.
- Activate and Mobilise: Activate and mobilise your muscles and joints through dynamic stretches, mobility exercises, and activation drills. This helps improve joint range of motion, activate key muscles, and enhance neuromuscular connections.
- Potentiate: Preparing your body for the specific demands of your upcoming activity/sport/training session. This will almost always contain at least one of the following: sport-specific drills, explosive movements, or technique-focused exercises to prime the nervous system and enhance performance.
When selecting the specific exercises for your sprint training session’s warm-up you could be tempted to focussing the majority of your activation drills on sprinting mechanics but a study looked into the factors that prepare your sprint dependant muscles without tiring them out and found that coordination exercises, dynamic flexibility drills, and acceleration runs were great for ensuring optimal activation of your muscles.
“Functional” exercises were shown to be significantly less efficient at enhancing muscle activation or sprint performance.
EXAMPLE SPRINT TRAINING WARM-UP
Overall, the structure of the perfect warm up will look similar for most sports and training sessions through the early parts of the warm-up with a few key differences in sport specificity in the later parts.
| Warm-Up Phase | Exercises | Duration / Sets + Reps |
| Raise/Rate | Moderate Jogging RPE 5/6 | 5-10 minutes |
| Activation + Mobility | Crouched Walking Kickbacks Hip Circles Bent over Reaches Side Lunges Walking Lunge with Torso Twist External Shoulder Rotations | 2 sets 8-12 each side |
| Potentiation | A-Skip B-Skip Pogo Jumps Acceleration foot strike Progressive Accelerations | 2 sets 8-12 each side 4 x RPE 6-7-8-9 |
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
DOES WARMING UP MAKE YOU SPRINT FASTER?
Yes! in a race setting you have one opportunity to perform at your best and a well structure warm-up can be the deciding factor whether you make it onto the podium or not.
IS IT BAD TO SPRINT WITHOUT WARMING UP?
Yes! due to the nature of sprinting itself (maximal effort exercise) attempting it without a warm-up would significantly increase the chances of you not only underperforming but also picking up an injury along the way.
CAN SPRINTING BUILD MUSCLE?
Sprinting will bring about muscle adaptations, and to a certain degree (depending on your experience) may bring about some muscle mass increase, However sprinting is not a “Muscle Building” exercise. If that is your goal maybe looking into hypertrophy would be a better idea.
WHAT EQUIPMENT DO I NEED FOR A SPRINT WARM-UP?
You are able to warm-up perfectly for a sprint training session without any specific equipment outside of what you would usually wear or have during a typical sprint training session.
IS A 5 MINUTE WARM-UP ENOUGH?
No, not really. 5 minutes is of course better than no warm-up but ideally, especially if you are training maximal effort exercises like sprints, more time would be taken to make sure everything is functioning how it should to maximise performance and reduce injury risk.
Next Steps
Wrapping Up
If you want a bit more access to our head coach, Alex, then we actually have a coaching community for athletes and lifters, that you can join to improve your performance and achieve new personal bests in your lifts, using the exact same systems he’s used to coach 160+ athletes, pro teams and talent pathways.
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So it’s a win-win, you try it out, and either you get loads stronger and massively speed up your progress – OR, you decide it’s not for you, but you get a bunch of free programmes, guides etc that are yours to keep forever.
Hope to see you in there
’til next time
Jacob Garner
REFERENCES
- Fradkin AJ, Zazryn TR, Smoliga JM. Effects of warming-up on physical performance: a systematic review with meta-analysis. J Strength Cond Res. 2010 Jan;24(1):140-8. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181c643a0. PMID: 19996770.
- Gil MH, Neiva HP, Garrido ND, Aidar FJ, Cirilo-Sousa MS, Marques MC, Marinho DA. The Effect of Ballistic Exercise as Pre-Activation for 100 m Sprints. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 May 24;16(10):1850. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16101850. PMID: 31137756; PMCID: PMC6572263.
- Herrera E, Osorio-Fuentealba C. Impact of warm-up methods on strength-speed for sprinters in athletics: a mini review. Front Sports Act Living. 2024 Feb 27;6:1360414. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2024.1360414. PMID: 38476581; PMCID: PMC10927743.
- PRINCE, C. et al. (2024) ‘Current warm-up practices before maximal sprinting in track-and-field (athletics)’, The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 64(4). doi:10.23736/s0022-4707.23.15243-1.
- P. Neves P, R. Alves A, A. Marinho D, et al. (2021) Warming-Up for Resistance Training and Muscular Performance: A Narrative Review. Contemporary Advances in Sports Science. IntechOpen. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96075.
- Sander, A. et al. (2013) ‘Effects of functional exercises in the warm-up on sprint performances’, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 27(4), pp. 995–1001. doi:10.1519/jsc.0b013e318260ec5e.
