Pro Athlete Training - Upper Body Warmups

Donna Wilkinson: We are here at Velocity Sports Performance for this workout. Now, you dont need to be at a gym for this workout like I said. All you really need is a living room space, outdoor situation where you can be out in the grass somewhere comfortable, somewhere you have a little bit of space to move around in. All we are going to do to warm-up is just the basic warm-up. We are just going to start with jumping jacks, good old-fashioned jumping jacks. We are going to do it for 20, just really trying to get your body loosened up and warmed up a little bit. So, lets go ahead and get started. Get those shoulders loosened up a little bit. Now, we are just going to do what we call neck clock. We are basically going to do four different angles on the clock. Were first going to bend our neck forward, just nice stretch, stretch that neck out, take it to 3 oclock. Stretch it across to 9 oclock, back to 6. Youre just going to go through this three times each direction. Really loosen that neck up. You might not feel this as much as me, playing football; I definitely need the neck stretch. Good okay.

Now, lets get those arms loosened up a little bit. We are just going to do long arm swing. So, we are going to start out. I am just getting one arm out, one arm back, make sure you keep your core nice and tight and we are going to do ten on each arm. Good. Get those arms nice and loosened up. Now, we are going to do big bear hug. So, we are just going to come around hug on top, alternate your arms and hug on the bottom, ten on each side. Really make sure that you get a stretch coming back out wide. Stretching the chest as you open up, hugging yourself as you come back. Getting up body kind of loosened up.

Now, we are going to continue to loosen the shoulders up a little bit. We are going to start with just small arm circles ten forward and then we are going to do ten backwards. Ten backwards, just loosened the body up, getting it ready for a nice workout, now we got ten middle and take it back for ten. Really get those shoulders nice and loose. Okay then we do ten big ones forward. Giant circles and then we are going to ten giant circles backwards. Good. Start to get that body loosened up a little bit. Now, we are going to move over and start getting the lower body loosened up a little bit. In this one you are going to want to move to nice wall space, where you have a little bit of space so you can move your legs around and kick a little bit. You dont want to kick anything so make sure you have got little bit of clear space. So, this is called leg swings and whats really important in this exercise is that when you stand you have a nice core posture, your body is straight, your arms out in front of you, you want to be solid one leg, you want to try to keep your body from moving as little as possible, so what we are going to do is we are going to bring out and then bring it back it across, trying not to move our core and the rest of our body. So, we are going to do this for ten.

Good. Then we are going to alternate and do the same on the other leg. Nice and tight arms out in front. Now, you feel this really loosing up your inner and outer hips. Next one is just going to start to loosen up your leg. Arm against the wall, on the wall leg closes to the wall, its going to be your movement leg. This is just stretching out your legs, when it come forward, kick back and try not to have any extra movement out of your upper body. Good, and then we switch and do it the other way. If you find yourself moving back and froth too much, just slow it down, slow down that leg kick so you can get a really good control. It will force your core muscles to work and it will also loosen up your leg.