How to Warm Up as a Hybrid Athlete

By Fergus Crawley

Most people spend too long warming up and not enough time training.

If you’re fitting serious training around work, family and life, every minute counts. A 30-minute warm-up in a 90-minute session is a third of your training time gone.

This post covers what a warm-up actually needs to do, how to build one for strength, running, cycling and swimming, and how to keep it short.

What Is a Warm-Up Actually For?

The aim of a warm-up is simple: to safely apply load or effort.

A good one:

  • Raises your heart rate and muscle temperature, which helps with higher force output later
  • Rehearses the movement you’re about to do
  • Gets you mentally switched on

Somewhere along the way, warm-ups turned into box-ticking. Long floor-based mobility routines do well on social media, but they’re often non-specific and slow. If you’re not breathing any harder, are you even warm?

The heavy emphasis on mobility probably owes a lot to the Olympic weightlifting component of functional fitness. Most people don’t need that much mobility work to prepare for simple, basic movement patterns.

If you enjoy a long routine and have the time, it won’t do you any harm. But if your time is limited, spend as little of it as you can warming up so you can get the training done.

The RAMP Warm-Up: A Framework, Not a Rulebook

You’ve probably seen the RAMP protocol:

  • Raise: increase heart rate and muscle temperature
  • Activate: switch on the muscles you’re about to use
  • Mobilise: work through the positions the movement requires
  • Potentiate: progressively increase intensity towards your working sets

It’s a useful template, but science doesn’t say you must do it this way. The phases blend together. The “activate” phase, for example, happens naturally when you perform a lighter version of the lift, because the muscles are doing the work anyway.

What matters is that your warm-up follows three continuums:

  1. Low intensity to high intensity
  2. Simple to complex
  3. Less focus to more focus, so you’re mentally prepared by the time you start

Stick to those and the exact format is up to you.

How to Warm Up for Strength Training

For most lifting sessions, the training itself is the warm-up.

  1. Raise: a few minutes of easy movement to lift heart rate and muscle temperature. Even walking to the gym counts for something.
  2. Mobilise what you need: pick the positions the lift demands. Before squats and deadlifts, that’s usually hips and hamstrings. Before pressing, a little low-level shoulder mobility.
  3. Perform the movement itself: start with the empty bar or a light load for higher reps.
  4. Add weight gradually, dropping reps until you reach your working sets.

A simple way to structure it is by plates: one plate, then two, then three, then your top set. Progressive loading handles the potentiation for you.

Tips:

  • Don’t make warm-up sets too easy. They should feel like you’re working, so you elicit the physiological effects you want.
  • Don’t fatigue yourself. Nothing in the warm-up should drain you before the main work.
  • Use between-set exercises if a certain position needs help, like a drill that improves your squat depth.
  • Complexity changes the rules. The more technical the lift, such as Olympic lifting, the more warm-up time it needs. Most basic gym movements aren’t complex.
  • Awkward objects need more prep. Strongman implements are harder to load gradually, so use lighter versions first.

Done efficiently, you can be ready for a heavy top set within about 20 minutes.

How to Warm Up for Running

The principle is the same: start easy, build gradually, settle, then build again.

An example for a track session (6 x 400m):

  • 2km warm-up, starting very easy and progressing slightly, with a couple of quicker efforts
  • A short rest
  • 50 to 100m strides
  • Leg swings and dynamic mobility

This raises your heart rate, introduces the pace you’ll be running, and lets your breathing settle before the first rep.

Why gradual builds work: when you start exercising, you go into oxygen debt, and your breathing plays catch-up. You don’t want that happening on your first working rep. A relatively short, steady period of exercise lets your ventilation catch up and puts you in a steadier state.

The faster you go, the more your warm-up matters

Running 400m reps at around five-minute mile pace needs less preparation than all-out sprinting in spikes. As speed increases, your muscles must switch on much more forcefully, which is why hamstring injuries are a risk in sprinting.

Think of it as a dimmer switch, not an on/off switch. If you’re sprinting slowly, you’ll get away with less. If you’re approaching top-end speed, you won’t.

What about those 10 to 15 minute floor routines?

Unless a physio has prescribed them for a specific issue, you’re usually better off spending that time moving on your feet. Standing and moving keeps your heart rate slightly elevated, which preserves the benefit of your “raise” phase.

If you have personal favourites like leg swings or A and B skips, keep them. The mental benefit of a routine you trust can outweigh the downside of a few extra minutes.

Racing and time trials

Short, fast events need more warm-up, not less. Runners racing the mile found that extending their warm-up from around 1,200m to 3 to 4km, then taking five to ten minutes to settle before the start, improved performance. The longer build meant heart rate had already peaked, so there was no big spike in effort at the start.

How to Warm Up for Cycling

The principles are identical:

  • Start easy
  • Gradually increase effort
  • Let your heart rate rise, then settle
  • Move into your main work

Cycling is more concentric than running, without the heavy landings and push-offs, so you’re at lower risk of the issues you’re warming up for in running.

The practical rule is stay on the bike. Getting off to do activation work disrupts your flow. If you have position-specific mobility to do, do it before you start riding.

How to Warm Up for Skill-Based Sports (Including Swimming)

Skill-focused sessions need the same structure, with extra attention on technique and focus. A well-learned skill should feel effortless, and the warm-up should help you get there.

Swimming example:

  • Land-based mobility for shoulders, lower back and hip flexors
  • Start the first section of the warm-up cautiously, feeling your way through the water
  • Gradually shift focus from feel to effort so pace rises naturally
  • Use paddles or pull buoys to prepare for the main set

Like cycling, once you’re in the pool, stay in the pool.

Put skill work first

If skill development is the goal and drills won’t be too fatiguing, restructure the session so the skill work forms part of the warm-up.

For example, with three 2.5km swims a week, you could spend the first 1,000m on drills and skill acquisition, then do 1,500m of higher-quality work to apply it. This tends to improve the quality of all three sessions.

This applies while you’re learning a skill. Once it’s established, practising it under fatigue becomes useful, because that’s what you’ll face late in a race.

FAQs

How long should a warm-up be?
It depends on the session. Most strength sessions need 10 to 20 minutes including warm-up sets. Fast running and races benefit from longer, more specific warm-ups.

Do I need to stretch before training?
Not necessarily. Mobilise only what you need to reach the positions the session requires.

Is RAMP the best warm-up protocol?
It’s a useful framework, but not the only one. What matters is progressing from low to high intensity, simple to complex, and less focus to more focus.

Should hybrid athletes warm up differently?
Use the same principles but tailor the warm-up to the session. A heavy lower-body day needs hip and hamstring prep, while a track session needs strides and pace-specific build-ups.

Can I skip the warm-up if I’m short on time?
Not entirely, but if your training builds up gradually, it can double as your warm-up.

The Bottom Line

Shorten your warm-up and put the time into training. Start easy, build progressively, match the demands of the session, then get on with it. The faster and more complex the movement, the more preparation it needs.

Want Help Structuring Your Hybrid Training?

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