Before starting a match we see football players performing activities on the pitch. What are they doing, what are they doing it for? They are doing warm-up exercises.

Should these exercises always be done? Or just before each game? Is it the same thing to do any exercise?

I'd like to help you design and organize your training sessions. Show you the way I do it, give you tips and suggestions that you can easily and effectively use. When designing a training session these are the questions I usually answer:

How much time do I have? How many players? What level? What do I want to achieve with get my intervention? What content will I apply? What methodology? What material resources do I need? How do I know if they are achieving the objectives? What changes could be introduced to improve the activities? What could be the problem? How can I avoid possible issues? How do I organize activities? How much time should I apply for each of them? What do I do if the activity does not work or if it becomes monotonous or boring? Etc…

Warming-up as a set of physical exercises should be conducted in an orderly and progressive manner. To organize exercises, we divide warm-up in phases, which have the same goals: activation, joint mobility, stretches and specific exercises.

Activation.- Consists on "waking up" the body, we raise breathing rate, increase muscle temperature and viscosity, increase beats per minute, vasodilation, we redistribute cardiac output, etc.

Articular Mobility.- perform abduction and adduction, flexion - extension, and/or rotation of the joints. Thus we lubricate cartilage and prepare ligament insertions.

Muscle stretching.- Once muscles have increased temperature, becoming more viscous and receiving more oxygenated blood, we can proceed to stretch the myofibrils and muscle fascia, preparing the muscles to lengthen and give maximum possible elasticity.