Warm-Up Protocol

Warm-Up Protocol

Collegiate athletics are just as competitive as professional athletics. Tailor-made training programs are necessary for athletes as they help reduce incidences of injury and improve performance. An effective warm-up protocol is essential in an effective training program. Warm-up exercises prepare an athlete’s cardiovascular and skeletomuscular system for the strain caused by vigorous training and competition.

Long jump athletes require strength, agility, power, and speed to jump as far as possible from the takeoff point. An effective warm-up protocol for long-jump athletes involves exercises such as heel kicks, high knee skips, and sprint drills. To increase the intensity of these exercises, the long jump athlete needs to perform these exercises while wearing weighted vests of 1kg. The first movement in the warm-up protocol is heel kicks. This movement involves rapidly kicking one’s heels towards their buttocks while bending both elbows at ninety degrees. Heel kicks are explosive exercises that work on the hamstring muscles, the glutes, the core muscles, arms, and back. The athlete should do a five-minute set of 10 heel kicks at 30-second intervals. The exercise is done for 30-seconds, and the athlete rests for 30-seconds.

The following exercise is high knee skips. This exercise involves skipping in place while bringing the knees towards the chest. This exercise boosts lower body strength and endurance by targeting the quads, calves, glutes, hip flexors, and hamstrings. The exercise requires one to keep their arms close to the body while bending the elbows at 90 degrees to maintain balance and control over body movement. This movement keeps one’s heart rate up while improving cardiovascular endurance. An athlete should do this exercise at 30-second intervals for five minutes. Sprint drills involve running at top speeds over short distances. Sprints are total-body exercises that work both the upper body muscles and lower body muscles. The exercise primarily targets the quads and works the shoulders, abs, hamstrings, glutes, and hip flexors. The athlete should sprint distances of 100 meters for 10 minutes. The recovery time between each sprint should be 2 minutes.

The exercises highlighted above target upper-body and lower-body muscles. As the exercises work all muscles in the body, they reduce the likelihood of injury while improving performance (Blahnik, 2011). These exercises also help the athlete build endurance, speed, agility, and power.

Reference

Blahnik, J. (2011). Full-body flexibility. Human Kinetics.