How To Do Football Warm Ups

Hi, my name's Matt Dilworth. I'm a Saturday Intermediate League goalkeeper and I also run and manage my own Sunday league side. And today, I'm going to take you through some footballing basics to help get you started.

And this is how to do a football warm-up, it's a very important part of any training or match day routine. It's one of the first things that you're going to do, designed to get you warm, to get you stretched out and get you ready for the activities that lie ahead, be it a thorough training session or competitive match. To start off with, I always find it beneficial just to get my players to have a little jog up and down the side of the pitch, a little more than a walking page, just shaking it out, getting themselves used to building up their body temp, temperature.

I then take it into some activities where it takes into account all different parts of it, bending down, jumping up into the air, side stepping, shimmying, little runs or sprints on the spot, things that can build it up as it goes along to get it up to a certain point level. To introduce the balls, we then just take it into a couple of little drills, passing drills, getting people's first touches in. Another common ball drill to use in a warm up is follow the ball, where you have two, split the players into two groups, standing in front of each other, a distance apart, you're laying the ball into the other end, getting your touch in and following the ball joining the back of the other queue.

You can progressively start by then picking the ball up and throwing it in to be able to chest it down and lay off and pass it and follow your pass, and again it goes to getting people alert for the match situation ahead. Then, obviously most importantly, is stretching. For me, running the men's side, I tend to think that my players know their bodies better than I do, so I tend to let them do their own stretches, but obviously the basics have to be covered, would it be hamstrings, calves, quads and stretching your upper body, these are all very important, and it has to be, you have to hold these stretches for sort of eight to ten seconds to really feel the benefit.

If you're not feeling the stretch, then you might as well not be doing it because it won't be taking effect. And that's how to do a football warm-up. .