I’m sure we’ve all heard of ‘warming up’, how it’s really important and how it keeps us from getting hurt but I have it on good authority from a physiotherapist friend of mine that there is no conclusive academic research that states that warm ups prevent injury (I’m not making this up, check out McCrary, Ackermann and Halaki, 2015). Odd thing to hear but how would you get ethical clearance for that?! “Yeah, we’re all certain that not warming up risks injury so we’re going to take a group of people and deliberately injure them to prove the point…”
No, this is one of those rare times where the consensus of experts seems to be ample evidence and there is indeed a consensus across physios, coaches, osteopaths, physical trainers, etc. that warming up IS very important. I’d go a little further and say YOU WILL go through a warm up, whether you do it deliberately or not. After all, you can’t drive fast without first driving slow (as in you can’t go from parked to 60mph without moving at 10mph, 20mph, and so on).
And there is plenty of research that has gone into warming up for activity, including the effect on performance rather than injury. So what does it say? How do we warm up effectively? And how do we make the most of what for many is a case of going through the motions?
Note: I may have got a bit carried away with this one and it has become a little long. If it’s too much reading, please skip to the Summary and read back later
A Quick Note Before We Begin
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RAMPing it Up… Slowly
Like I say, there is plenty of academic research out there relating to warm ups; about 1.3 million results for the term “warm up” in Google Scholar. This is an enormous rabbit hole for anyone willing to dive in.
More and more is related to climbing specifically. In his book The Science of Climbing Training (2023), Sergio Consuegra writes “a proper warm up affects 79 per cent of performance-related factors and can improve performance by up to 20 per cent”. Berman dedicates a lot of his book Climbology (2023) to the topic, as do many others.
So what are they all saying? And do they all agree? Well, yeah, they mostly all say the same sort of thing and many of them come back to the RAMP Model. Originally developed by Ian Jeffreys but very well explained by this piece from Ryan Parker on Human Kinetics, RAMP is a simple enough acronym, albeit with some fancy words:
- Raise – Increase muscle temperature, core temperature, blood flow, muscle elasticity and neural activation.
- Activate – Engage the muscles in preparation for the upcoming session
- Mobilize – Focus on movement patterns which will be used during the game.
- Potentiate – Gradually increasing the stress on the body in preparation for the upcoming competition/session
Jeffreys (2018) The Warm-Up: Maximize Performance and Improve Long-Term Athletic Development. Human Kinetics
It’s a decent model and one in which I can fully see merit. There’s a reason it’s used by many organisations, including Swim Wales. That said, it’s still a model, so what are the underpinning principles? And how do we put it into practice?
Key Principles
Let’s make this easier for you with a question: what are the key principles of warm ups?
If we wanted a nice, simple, single sentence that summarises warm ups for us, my preferred option goes something like this:
Getting us ready for the task we’re about to perform
I’m not alone. Afonso et al (2023) put it similarly: “the warm-up is expected to prepare the athletes for performing in the subsequent training session or competition”. They have 8 references to back that up.
While I do like that phrase – it encapsulates everything nicely – it is a little loose. It lacks any of the ‘how’ or ‘what’ that we need to do. Friend and colleague Ben Brooks inadvertantly gave me a great little infographic, generated by AI that sums up our key principles really nicely:
Hit those three points and you’re moving in the right direction. But if you want to really make the most, let’s add in a bit more nuance. That being said, we can add in some more detail too, if you like. These cue cards were pinched from experienced coach and coach educator, Andy Swann. He broke it down into 9 points (I added one) that are as follows:
- Introduce/Purpose – originally, this related to introducing yourself to the group but it may also be introducing the session you’re about to have with a purpose
- Pulse Raiser – getting the heart rate up
- Mobilisation – getting the joints moving
- Agility, Balance, Co-ordination – three aspects that one could include that will be required later
- Core Work and Leg Work – again, two oft forgotten areas that can easily be incorporated into a warm up
- Mental Priming – my addition, with the idea of getting the head in the game or aligning warm up with session goal
- Easy climbing – after even the most extensive warm up, start with the easiest climbs available
You can download the cards if you’re really keen. In our list above, you’ll notice some are in bold and those are the essentials to include. The others are optional extras. Notice, though, that there’s nothing in there that targets the arm muscles or fingers that we’re likely to use the most.
That’s all related to a concept called Recruitment (also sometimes called Potentiation as in the RAMP model above or activation but all meaning the same thing). Colin McGee, writing for Pitch Six tells us “The Recruitment Prep is designed to gradually increase intensity to the fingers preparing them to tolerate the high physical demand from your climbing” or we can think of it like this:
Recruitment in physiology is the same idea as recruitment in business: we pick the right muscle/person for the job we want to do, get them involved early days, show them what we want to do and let them crack on once they’re ready to go
Now we’re starting to get specific so let’s switch tact and start to look at how we make this happen for real.
Making It Real
So there’s all your theory. Great! Now what?
Well we need to translate it into something we can use before our sessions. There are many options out there that you can simply copy and apply for yourself, such this good one from Hoopers Beta. But Afonso et al make a good point: “atheletes should have an active role in modulating their warm-up activities”. We can do better than copy and paste.
The fact is, if you apply the principles from above, you can pretty much do whatever you wish in your warm ups. Ideally, you may follow some kind of Replication Training, whereby you take the purpose of the session overall and filter it back down to your warm up but this may be more generic than on a specific climb. Either which way:
look at the movements and techniques of the purpose of your session and use that as a basis to form your warm up.
For example, if your project line is a delicate, technical climb on a slab, perhaps doing lots of jumping around won’t be ideal mental preparation. Likewise, heaps of static stretches might not help you on a massive dyno. But then maybe that would work for you! It’s up to you to decide what works for you. There is no single warm up for every person for every session.
The Old School Warm Up
All of this has certainly changed dramatically since I started climbing at the turn of the century. Back then, in climbing at least, I don’t recall anyone really talking about warm ups at all. The closest we got was starting with bouldering before the ‘real climbing’ (lead climbing being the socially accepted form of climbing to target) or starting off with easier grades before building it up.
About the only time anyone ran around the climbing wall was if they’d left their shoes in the car and had to run through the rain (you wouldn’t be inside on a sunny day) or perhaps if you saw a rat in the corner of the room. As for outside, pah! The walk in was probably as good as you were going to get. Here is one of my earliest trips, to Ailefroide back in August 2005 and I dare say the term ‘warm up’ didn’t come up once in two weeks.
But please don’t misunderstand me that I’m suggesting this was better and we shouldn’t move on. I don’t advocate sending children up chimneys just because it’s what we used to do and I’m not advocating to skip warm ups either. Society moves on, things get better and we learn more that we can use to enhance the experience for ourselves.
What I am suggesting is that back in the day, we weren’t all walking around constantly completely broken and suffering terrible performance on every session. No, we were okay with our cup of tea warm ups so perhaps we don’t absolutely have to do all that floor-based stuff every single time. Perhaps there’s a nice middle ground in here; one where we get warm, get better performance, get injured less AND still manage to make the most of our climbing session on the wall.
Grabbing the Opportunity
So far, we’ve talked a lot about warming up the body physically. What’s often less discussed is the opportunity to utilise the warm up for other gains too. That said, conversations are growing in this area, including among coaches wishing to use this time to teach new skills (see my own article outlining the Learning Window).
Afonso et al (2023) wrote a brilliant paper which “highlights the warm-up period [can be used] as an opportunity to teach or improve certain skills or physical capacities, and not only as a preparation for the subsequent efforts”. It backs up what I’ve been saying for a long time: we need easier climbs to get warm AND to make cognitive gains. So why not use them together?
A partner exercise being used as a breakdown of a cross through/rose move on a coach education course in Guernsey in 2025. However this exercise would also work very well for joint mobility as a warm up.
If you’re interested in a more formal course covering warm ups, check out the BMC FUNdamentals of Climbing 1 where we dig a little deeper
The Case for Routine
So far, we’ve suggested having variety in our warm ups but there’s a case to be made for having some routine in there too. Climbing psychologists are known to encourage rituals and routines (see Rebecca Williams Climb Smarter text), in order to psychologically warm up, so to speak.
Many of us can relate to this, going through our own little rituals when we participate in the same activity. From signing in at reception to getting a cup of tea to climbing on the same lines, often the times we break these routines can see our performance plummet.
I’ve written more about this in another article called Pre-Climbing, available here.
Some Quick, Practical Troubleshooting
Really quickly, let’s have a quick look at some quick, troubleshooting type tips that we can put into practice for real:
- Consider using some props. Things like resistance bands and edge blocks can be a great way of achieving that recruitment, both at the wall but especially at the crag where the depth of available climbing is lower
- Do SOME of the moves but not all at once. Whether indoors or out, I’ve been known to launch straight onto the project line but limiting to one or two of the moves at once (with the condition the holds are suitable i.e. not fierce crimps). You can see a drill to guide you here
- Own it. Whatever you choose to do, there’s a chance it may make you feel self conscious. While that’s totally understandable, try and find somewhere private and remember that you have chosen to do this for a reason. A well planned warm up is pointless if it doesn’t happen
- You do you. While your friend may do one warm up, or you may have seen a video online telling you to do x, y or z, remember that you are an individual. Anything you do needs to be tailored to you
Summary
Warm Ups: you’re doing it anyway. Turns out with some small tweaks, we can make big gains. Do they help prevent injury? Probably but there’s no actual evidence, so be careful if you try and make that claim.
What they do affect is performance. Big time. They can be a prime opportunity to develop our skills or to have a standard routine that helps us get mentally prepared.
And that’s the important bit: the warm up should get you ready for the session you’re about to have. There’s models to follow if you like (such as the RAMP Model) or some basic principles (get your heartrate up, get your joints mobile, get your head in the game) or something in between (see the cue cards above).
Ideally, the warm up should match our session but there’s a balance to be made here, between being too specific on our chosen goal or too rigid. Either which way, have a think about what works for you and how you can make gains that work for you.
If You Enjoyed That…
All of these resources are provided to you completely free of charge. I’m a big believer of helping people however I can. Sadly, they are not free to create, often taking a substantial amount of time and research to create. If you would like to help support me, you can Buy Me A Coffee, with whatever donation you wish by clicking the button here.
References/Further Reading
Afonso (2023) Revisiting the ‘Whys’ and ‘Hows’ of the Warm-Up: Are We asking the Right Questions? Sports Medicine. 54: 23-30. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s40279-023-01908-y.pdf
Berman (2023) Climbology. Sharp End Publications
Consuegra (2023) The Science of Climbing Training. Vertebrate Press
Hooper (n.d.) A Great 10-Minute Warm-Up for Climbers. Retrieved from https://www.hoopersbeta.com/library/proper-warm-up-for-climbers
Jeffreys (2018) The Warm-Up: Maximize Performance and Improve Long-Term Athletic Development. Human Kinetics
McCrary, Ackermann and Halaki (2015) A systematic review of the effects of upper body warm-up on performance and injury. British Journal of Sports Medicine; 49: 935-942.
McGee (2024) How To Warm Up Your Fingers. Retrieved from https://pitchsix.com/blogs/blog/the-best-hangboarding-warm-up?srsltid=AfmBOopbIgkQYKMBWzeLxUGPdJiVO3Qn2Cn0ovg5jJZzPwFbFdsFgpMD
Parker (2019) What is the RAMP warm-up? Retrieved from: https://humankinetics.me/2019/03/04/what-is-the-ramp-warm-up/
Williams (2023) Climb Smarter. Sequoia Books