Warming up is important to help your body and mind get into an improved shooting state. With it, you reduce the movement of your arm (getting better shots from the start and feeling more confident), prevent injuries, and remember the body sensations that will help you in training and competition. You are more focused and better prepared.
The French Shooting Federation publishes great resources for shooters in French, among which is this warm up routine that I do before each session.
This is just a translation of the exercises in this great poster. All credit goes to FFTIR! By the way, the two shooters in these pictures are French champions Mathilde Lamolle and Édouard Dortomb.
Use the table of contents as your guide once you learn the exercises.
Table of Contents
General Warm Up
The objective here is to wake up your body (muscles and articulations) and get the blood going. Warming up will help your coordination, proprioception, and concentration.
Everything is done slowly. From toes to head.
Run in place for 1 to 2 minutes
Ankle circles, 15 in each direction and foot
Knee circles, 20 in each direction
Knee raises, 10 each alternating legs
Hip rotations, 20 in each direction
Trunk:
Trunk rotations, 15 each side alternating
Trunk inclinations, 15 each side alternating
Back and Shoulders:
Raise each shoulder then both at the same time, 10 times the three of them
Bring shoulders to the back and front, 15 times both
Rotate both shoulders, 15 times in each direction
Neck:
Slow neck forwards and backwards (“yes”), 10 times each
Slow neck to each side (“no”), 10 times each
Slow neck lateral bends, 10 times each
Straight arm circles (tight to wide), 10 in each direction
Elbow on palm rotations, 10 each
The arm that turns goes under the arm that holds the elbow and back.
Wrists and hands:
Wrist rotations with clamped hands, 10 each direction
Fast hands open and close, 10 each
Specific warm up
Focus on internal sensations to progressively activate muscle groups that participate in shooting.
15 holds of 15 seconds, alternate both arms
You can also do it with your eyes closed.
Dry fire for specific discipline
This you have to develop with your own experience and adapt to the discipline (precision, rapid fire…).
Mental warm up
Visualization, read journal and notes. You can also do it at the same time you do the physical warm up.
My extras
On top of the physical exercises included in this warm up routine, I like to do four more forearm warm up exercises, because they are injury prone. I came up with this part of the routine before learning about the French Federation warm up, so they are probably not necessary, but I still like to do them.
Fists up and down, palms down, 10 each direction
Elbows to your body, forearms parallel to the ground, closed fist with palm side facing down. Then raise and lower your fists without moving your arms.
Fists up and down, palms to the side, 10 each direction
Elbows to your body, forearms parallel to the ground, closed fist with palm side facing towards each other. Then raise and lower your fists without moving your arms.
Forearm pronations palms up, 10
Elbows to your body, forearms parallel to the ground, palms down. Then rotate your hands so that they end up facing up and back.
Forearm supinations palms to the back, 10
Arms slack down the sides of your body, palms facing back. Then turn hands away from your body.
And yours?
What are your favorite warm up routines and exercises? Leave a comment to help everybody learn more.