Creative/fun warmups?

[edsko]

Hiya guys,

As an instructor, I try to vary my warmups to keep students from getting bored. However, the space in our gym is limited and so is my inventiveness 🙂 I’d appreciate if anyone could recommend fun/creative warmups, warmups they enjoy doing or warmups they enjoy giving students (I realize these may not be the same sets of warmups! 🙂 Our lessons are 1.5 hours so usually the warmup takes somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes.

Thanks!

[johnl-d11]

Re: Creative/fun warmups?

Burpees, lots of em. That will get the body warmed up. 🙂

I usually warm up my class with a lap around our building, (about a minute jog), come in for 30 squats, 30 push ups, lots of lunges, 10-20 burpees, some bear crawls, some static and dynamic stretching. Then partner into 2’s.. one with mitts on, mitt holder calls 2 numbers (1 through 8).. first number is punches, 2nd number is push ups. each person does 2-3 mins.

[nickolas-cook]

Re: Creative/fun warmups?

Team pushups (either double head to head or a whole line of people doing them as one unit).
Pyramids (running from one end of the room to the other, doing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., up to sets of 10 each stop, pushups and then squats or crunches).
County Fair (six or seven minute long exercises that you have to rotate a person at a time through the circuit; what’s great about this one is that everyone has at least one exercise they dread, so they can work at it.)
Sled dog (jumprope around one person’s waist, another person or more holds the ends of the rope while the ‘dog’ pulls them from one end of the room to the other.)

[crazy-train]

Re: Creative/fun warmups?

i like to throw in an obstacle course every couple of weeks into my warm up. I’ll have the class do laps around the room, and at certain spots I’ll have pads (at varying hieghts) for them to jump over, if they know diving rolls they can do those. I’ll also have a rope or bar that they have to duck under. you can add random calls of push-ups, sit-ups, or whatnot at any time…havn’t had any serious injuries with that yet

[clfmak]

Re: Creative/fun warmups?

There was a neat one I learned at a seminar with Eyal, but its kind of hard to describe. You start on your hands and feet, stomach facing down. Pick up your right hand and left foot and rotate to a stomach up position. Switch to left hand and right foot, and continue rotating the same direction to a stomach down position. You can repeat this and you end up rotating in a circle as your torso also rotates. It looks like crappy breakdancing. I like it because it puts the shoulder through a range of motion while supporting bodyweight.

[edsko]

Re: Creative/fun warmups?

quote Nickolas Cook:

Team pushups (either double head to head or a whole line of people doing them as one unit).

What exactly are people doing in the line?

[edsko]

Re: Creative/fun warmups?

quote CLFMak:

It looks like crappy breakdancing.

Sounds like fun 🙂 Must try that one out.

[nickolas-cook]

Re: Creative/fun warmups?

edsko, picture a line of people in pushup position, feet of head of line person are on the second person’s shoulders, second person’s feet are on the third person’s shoulders, and so on and so forth. Everyone goes down when the leader calls it out; they come back up when he/she calls it. It’s a teamwork exercise that keeps everyone moving together, so there are no slackers.

[destrangis]

Re: Creative/fun warmups?

quote CLFMak:

There was a neat one I learned at a seminar with Eyal, but its kind of hard to describe. You start on your hands and feet, stomach facing down. Pick up your right hand and left foot and rotate to a stomach up position. Switch to left hand and right foot, and continue rotating the same direction to a stomach down position. You can repeat this and you end up rotating in a circle as your torso also rotates. It looks like crappy breakdancing. I like it because it puts the shoulder through a range of motion while supporting bodyweight.

I’ve done something similar in class once. Then there was one where you have to grab your feet and then roll onto your side and then back up, using a minimal amount of momentum and instead just shifting your weight. Hard to describe, but it was fun.

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