Transitions - the power of the warmup to change athlete focus

Transitions are incredibly important.

On a gut level I think many of us feel it, and research is backing that up. Some are big and easily identifiable: moving from middle school to high school, graduating into the job market, maybe welcoming a new family member. These are all big events.

Some transitions, we partake in everyday, but may be a little less conscious of. It’s these everyday ones that we can overlook. We often do them, but can be unaware of it, until life comes along and we haven’t had the opportunity to make them happen.

A good example is the commute home from our job - where we begin to shift our brains from work mode into something else, like me mode or my time. Or, maybe I'm needing to change into family mode so I can be present with my partner or kids. Perhaps even something as simple as going from work to hanging out with friends. Whatever it is, we need that time to shift our focus and mindset.

This idea of transition is true of our athletes as well. One of the challenges of coaching, especially adolescent athletes, is how do we get them to focus on the task at hand. It could be the game or their event, maybe even training. How do we get those young, easily distracted, preoccupied minds to forget everything else, to focus, to be present.

For me as a coach this is something we work on every day in training. It’s an exercise that has proven effective for many of my athletes, and requires very little practice time to implement. By mid-season it often requires nothing more than a verbal cue from me. We start every training session, regardless of sport, with a dynamic warmup — a quick five to ten minute routine that gets everyone moving, warmed up, stretched, and hopefully focused. When I say focused, I don’t need them to be super serious. Rather, laughing and joking with teammates is fine. It's often good, as this becomes team building. It’s a time when I can be lighter and joke around with them as well. Sometimes, I’ll even do the warmup with the kids, as I’ve found that it helps with that team lightness and bonding. All of this is great, as long as we’re hitting the goal of transitioning from “outside,” or usually school, to being right here with our team.

How does this work though? If we’re honest the kids probably aren’t going to pick up what I want them to get out of this on their own. They’ll likely only see it as the warm up we do, or how we start our practice everyday. I have to intentionally frame our dynamic warm-up as transition time.

Now, like many of you at the very start of our season, I’m very clear with my expectations, especially that first week or few sessions we have. My first expectation is to be on time for training! This is non-negotiable. Have the respect for your teammates and yourself to be on time. If our practice starts at 3:10, this means we’re ready to go at 3:10, not putting our shoes on at 3:10. I do this to emphasize the importance of the warmup. It’s something that we’re going to do together as a team, not just a buffer we go through before the real training starts.

Now that the kids know the importance of being on time, my next step is to teach them the actual warmup. I talk about what stretch we’re doing, show them the proper form, tell them what they should be feeling, and where they should be feeling it. As they are doing each exercise, I will also begin framing the warm-up the way I would like for them to see it.

I’ll say things like:

“Let’s use this time to transition. Let’s begin to switch our brains over. Focus on being here, in practice. We can let all that stuff from the school day go. Don’t worry about that test you just took, or the homework you need to do. Don’t worry about what your parents might say when you get home. Let’s try to be present, right here, right now, so that we can make the most of our time together.”

Maybe they’re successful, maybe they’re not, but it gives them the space and practice of doing this. Over those next few sessions, I usually only need to give them reminders about what stretch comes next in our routine, but I’ll definitely give them verbal cues about transitioning their minds, especially if they seem particularly distracted. If you’ve coached kids for any amount of time at all, you know there are days that they show up and they are just squirrely. They're super distracted, or maybe they’re energy is really up, something is going on. It’s great, we want them to have fun, sports is supposed to be fun, but having this ritual helps to corral and guide that energy, instead of needing to put a damper on it. Establishing the warmup as a place of transition carries over outside of training as well. We start every pre-game warm up with the same dynamic stretching routine from training. It can become like an automatic switch for the team. The kid that was in the bleachers scrolling social media and reluctant to put their shoes on two minutes ago, is now more focused and present. Because we started to build that habit of channeling our attention every day in practice. It’s that idea of ritual that we’re tapping into. So even if it’s right before a game, it doesn't matter what just happened or who just sent them a text. We start the warmup, and the body and mind will begin the transition process on their own.

To take this idea deeper, often on an individual basis, I may talk with kids about the idea of ritual, but also refuge. It’s a concept that I find usually resonates with more mature kids, usually at the high school level. It’s a related concept and we’ll talk about more in another article.