A warm-up routine for racket sports (RAMP, 10 min)

Most warm-ups in racket sports are either skipped or wasted. Skipped, and the first ten minutes of play become the warm-up, usually the ten minutes injuries happen. Wasted, and you spend it on long static stretches that leave players slower for the rally that follows.

There is a better way, and it has a structure you can reuse every session. It is called RAMP: raise, activate, mobilise, potentiate. It came out of strength and conditioning, but it fits a badminton hall, a tennis court or a padel cage just as well.

Why warm up at all

Two reasons, and only one of them is injury.

The first is readiness. Cold muscles are slower and tighter. Ankles, hips and shoulders that have not moved through range are more likely to strain when you suddenly ask for a deep lunge or a full overhead. A proper warm-up raises tissue temperature and takes the key joints through the range the session will demand, which lowers the injury risk on those first sharp movements.

The second is performance, and this is the one coaches under-use. A warm-up is your first chance to rehearse the patterns the session needs. If today is about the net kill, the warm-up should already have players splitting, pushing off and reaching. By the time the first drill starts, the movement is primed.

The four blocks of RAMP

Raise. Lift the heart rate and get blood moving. Light court movement: jogging the tramlines, side shuffles, shadow movement to the four corners. Two to three minutes. Players should be warm and lightly breathing, not blowing.

Activate. Wake up the muscles that stabilise you on court: glutes, core, the small muscles around the shoulder. Think mini-band walks, glute bridges, band pull-aparts. The point is control, not effort.

Mobilise. Take the key joints through range with movement, not held stretches. Ankle rocks, deep walking lunges with a rotation, leg swings, arm circles, thoracic openers. For racket sports the non-negotiables are ankles, hips, thoracic spine and shoulders. Those are the joints your sport loads hardest.

Potentiate. Now sharpen up with progressively faster, sport-specific movement. Split steps, short accelerations, a few shadow lunges to the net, easy feeds building to full pace. This is where the warm-up turns into the session, and where you rehearse the exact patterns the drills will demand.

The order matters. You cannot potentiate a cold, stiff body. Raise and mobilise earn the right to move fast.

A copyable 10-minute routine

Use this as your default. Adjust the potentiate block to the sport and the session objective.

• Raise (2 min): shadow movement to all four corners, building pace.
• Activate (2 min): 10 mini-band lateral steps each way, 10 glute bridges, 15 band pull-aparts.
• Mobilise (3 min): 5 ankle rocks per side, 5 walking lunges with trunk rotation, 10 leg swings per leg, 10 arm circles each way, 5 thoracic rotations per side.
• Potentiate (3 min): 4 split steps into a corner push, 3 short accelerations, 6 shadow lunges to the net at full reach, then a few live feeds building to match pace.

Ten minutes, no kit beyond a mini-band, and it scales from a single 1-2-1 to a full squad.

Tailoring the potentiate block

The first three blocks barely change between sports. The last one should.

For badminton, prime deep lunges, overhead reach and fast recovery from the corners. For tennis, rehearse wide split steps, groundstroke rotation and the load into a serve. For padel, work the low ready position, quick changes of direction and the turn to the back glass. Match the movement to the patterns the session will actually use.

The mistakes to avoid

Long static stretching before play. Holding a stretch for thirty seconds before you compete can briefly reduce power and speed. Keep static work for after, or a separate session. In the warm-up, keep everything moving.

Going too hard too early. A warm-up that opens with full-pace sprints or maximal hitting skips the raise and mobilise stages and becomes the thing it was meant to prevent. Build intensity through the blocks, do not start at the top.

Same warm-up for a freezing hall and a warm one. Cold conditions need a longer raise and mobilise. Read the room, literally.

Treating it as separate from coaching. The warm-up is coaching time. Use it to set the tone, name today’s objective, and start grooving the pattern you are about to work on.

Ten minutes, four blocks, every session. The players move better, get hurt less, and walk into the first drill already switched on.