The R.A.M.P Warm up method is a number of goals that should be included within your warm up for it to be ideal, effective and sufficient. It is broken down to 4 goals…
Raise – Raise the Heart Rate, temperature, breathing, oxygen delivery to the muscles
Activate – The muscle groups
Mobilise – The Joints
Potentiate – Simulate movements and patterns specific to what you are going to be doing in the training session
An effective Warm Up is hugely important, often overlooked and then the majority of the time its not efficient. 10 Minutes steady plod on the bike isn’t going to cut it.
So what you want when putting together a warm up is to tick the box of them 4 goals, are you warmer, out of breath slightly, have you included exercises and movements that activate your muscles, wakes you up a little bit more and makes you more alert and moved your body through your entire range of motion so your muscles and joints are now more flexible and ready to move at higher intensity. Have you mimicked movements and patterns specific to what you intend to do?
An example of a warm up for a sprint session:
A1) Air Squats x10
A2) Lunges x10
A3) Spidermans x10
A4) Inchworms x5
A5)KB Swing x10
These exercises performed in a circuit A1-A5 will raise the HR, temperature, breathing, activate the major muscle groups, mobilise the joints through their range of movement
B) Broad Jumps 4×2
This will serve as a further drill to activate the muscle groups and get them firing up quickly and raise your own attention.
C) In this part you would perform drills and skills specific to the sport/activity so in this case you would include things like A-Skips, Bounds, Rolling Sprints etc. REMEMBER not to load up too much on Volume/Intensity with this, don’t want to begin fatiguing yourself before you start. The drills should start at relatively low intensity and gradually build it up throughout the reps/sets so that your body is seeing a gradual increase in intensity as your body becomes more prepared. Rest periods should be sufficient so that you are able to perform the drills with consistency and sound technique without too much fatigue.