Team Warm Up-Lower Body 2 of 2: Stick Routine

As I clarified in my previous post, there are so many things that are important to address in order to establish quality movement prior to lifting and performance overall. With large groups or teams, utilizing your simple tools can reinforce proper posture and positioning while performing a wide array of movements without the need for constant cueing.

Speaking of cues, it can make you job much easier by teaching the desired position you want them in with the tool that you are using. For example, with the stick warm up, on the first day they performed it we established what we expected them to do during the movements. Basically arms straight, chest out, belly button in, and knee(s) out. So now every time we do this routine and they are told to get in position, they know exactly what that means and it takes care of having to constantly throw out cues. Here is a example of the routine.

Foam Roll
Stretch
Kneeling Psoas stretch 1x30 ea
Wall Adductor/Hamstring-Lie down, V Legs against wall, actively abduct legs
Hurdle Mobility Forward (Paired with Dynamic Stretch)
"Fish Hook"
Lead w/ R/L
Over/Under
"Grab Stick" aka Homemade cut up PVC and Dowels
OH squat w/ long pause in hole 2x15 sec
Kneeling t-spine Rotation x10 each
OH Squat w/ 1 sec pause x10 "Count out loud"
Single leg good mornings x10 ea
OH Lunge w/ twist x10ea
Monster Walk F/B x 5ea
Glute Bridge- x10 w/ 3 sec hold

From here we will again lead into or movement drills and then it is off to the iron game! You may have gotten the indication from the routine that I love counting reps out loud and them doing it in sync. This just avoids guys trying to slack off on a few reps because if they are not in sync with everyone they will stick out pretty easily. Also that these sticks were all homemade. We cut spare dowels, found old broomsticks and PVC that met the dimensions too. This way we were able to obtain more than enough sticks for large groups for nothing more than putting in extra time to make them and searching.

The thing I like most about this routine is that you can identify progress in mobility and keep weekly note of how there movement patterns are improving. Hope this serves as some help And I will have some video up with the two routines early next week which can help give a better picture at the constancy of the warm up and how easy it is to implement.