Over the years I’ve lost count of the number of guys I’ve had coming to Wild Geese week in, week out, lifting kettlebells, barbells, moving their bodyweight around.

Many take part in martial arts, maybe kickboxing or Muay Thai, maybe Judo or BJJ

Some mountain bike

And then one day they come in limping

“Oh Dave I’ve hurt my [knee/groin/hamstring/back]”

“Oh shit,” I reply, “What were you doing?”

“Nothing much, played a bit of 5 a side with the lads yesterday, think I did it then”

Yes, more of my crew have suffered injury from a kick about with the lads on a Wednesday night, than they have had lifting weight or taking part in full contact martial arts.

Why do we think that is?

The answer is simple, and when I explain it to the lads, they realise how simple.

Nobody warms up for a friendly kick about.

BUT, within 5 minutes of the game starting, they’re charging around like it’s the last 5 minutes of the World Cup final!

Think about it…

Sprints, from a standing start. Cutting and direction changes. Body to body clashes, often from the side.

Now, it’ll take you all of 5 minutes to Google the sports science literature of the forces and injury risks of sprinting from a standing start and fast / plyometric direction changes.

Would it surprise you if I told you that most field sport injuries occur off the ball, with no contact from another player? Yes, you literally hurt yourself.

So what are we going to do about it?

You are going to WARM UP!

Yes, be the weirdo

While they’re point and laughing at you before the game, you’ll be out manoeuvring them during it AND you’ll be far less likely to the guy hobbling around at the end of the game!

How do we warm up? Here’s a selection of the typical Wild Geese style warm ups:

Skipping and Joint Mobility:

These are a few of the 100 rep warm ups we use in our lunchtime sessions, these are shown at real speeds, notice how they only take 7-10 minutes to complete:

If skipping isn’t an option (I don’t know why it wouldn’t be, a rope costs around a tenner and takes up no space in your bag) sub in jogging on the spot, jumping jacks, cross crawls, lateral shuffles etc. Keep the more dynamic drills to later in the warm up, so the lateral shuffles should be left until the last set of skipping.

And this one is an old video showing warming up the upper body with Indian Clubs:

Which brings me neatly to the sales pitch….

I’m running an Indian Club workshop on March 2nd, you really should attend, but there’s only 8 places remaining (at the time of publishing this) and I’ll not accept any more than that. Everything you need to know about the workshop is here:

So now you have no excuse for missing training because of a kick about with the lads. It’s as simple as warming up, same as you would do if you came to the gym.

As ever, if there’s any questions, drop me a comment below.

Chat soon

Dave Hedges www.WG-Fit.com