Welcome to our injury-resilience-building warm-up, and a big hello to those who join us from the corresponding page in our book, The Female Body Bible. 

This warm-up is designed to help build strong, resilient girls and women who have great technique and movement-patterns. It should take less than fifteen minutes, once you learn the exercises. 

Basic guidelines

• Always focus on your technique.
• If possible, do the exercises in bare feet.
• Start slowly, and layer on strength and power once the technique is established.

Each exercise is to be done for one minute, slowly, intentionally, focusing on technique, rather than fitting as many in as you can. 

Squat

1. Starting with your feet in line with your shoulders, move your hips back first, as if sitting down in a chair, keeping your weight evenly distributed over the whole foot.
2. Remain slow and controlled on the way down, making sure the knees don’t drop inwards.
3. Push through the whole foot as you stand up.
4. Advanced: add a small jump at the start of your squat with a soft landing, focusing on landing mechanics (no knees knocking or caving in).

Split squat (1 minute each leg)

1. Place one foot 50–80cm in front of the other, then raise the heel of your back foot.
2. Drop down into a squat, looking ahead and keeping your torso long.
3. Control the movement on the way down, keeping your knee in line with your foot.
4. Drive up through the front foot.
5. Advanced: Add a forward lunge, where you step forward and then back, alternating the leg you step forward on.

Hip hinge

1. Place your feet shoulder-width apart and slight bend your knees, make sure your weight is going through the whole of each foot.
2. Push your hips back while keeping the torso long.
3. Your hip drives the movement, so your upper body will move because your hips are moving. As soon as the hips stop, the torso stops.
4. Starting with the hips, drive back up.
5. Advanced: hold a single dumbbell or a kettlebell in both hands just beneath your belly button, between your hips: perform the hip hinge and power through the resistance provided by the weight.

Forward lunge

1. Walk forward into a lunge position – focus on knee alignment: your knee should be over your foot.
2. Keep the torso long throughout.
3. Advanced: Add an upper-body rotation either away, from or towards the front knee, as you step into the lunge.

Clock lunge

1. Imagining you’re the middle of a clock, step forward with one leg to 12 o’clock and back to the centre.
2. Work your way around the whole clock face – 12, 1, 2, 3, etc. – always keeping the body facing forward. On each step forward  step as far out of range as you can.
3. Advanced: Reach forward with your arms, perhaps holding 1kg or 2kg weights, or a tin of tomatoes, as you step forward.

Bridge

1. Lie on your back, feet flat on the floor.
2. As you exhale, lift your hips off the floor and hold them up – keep your knees aligned over your feet and don’t let them drop in or out.
3. Build towards holding for one minute, breathing throughout – don’t hold your breath.
4. Advanced: Single-leg bridges – as above but with one leg outstretched.

Bird dog

1. On all fours, evenly distribute your weight through each knee and hand.
2. On an exhale, extend opposite hand and foot, reaching as far back and forward as you can, slowly and with intention.
3. Keep your weight evenly distributed on the remaining hand and knee, so you don’t shift over to one side – this is really tricky to do well.
4. After holding out the extended hand and foot for a couple of seconds, return to centre with control (no wobbling), then switch to the other hand and foot.
5. Advanced: Hold the positions for longer and focus on keeping your core clenched.

Vertical jump

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1. Starting with your feet shoulder-width apart, come down into a squat, then drive up as hard as you can and jump high.
2. Land lightly and concentrate on your knees – they should be aligned with your feet, not dropping inwards.
3. Add more power as your technique improves.
4. Advanced: Jump off two feet and land on one.

Skip

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1. Start with basic skipping – focus on landing lightly to improve your body control.
2. Add in power so that you’re driving up through the knee and still landing lightly.
3. Advanced: Move around the space in different directions.

Balance

1. Balance on one foot for 10–30 seconds at a time.
2. Advanced: Make it more challenging by closing your eyes or by standing on an uneven surface then throwing and catching a ball or lifting your arms above your head. You should be wobbling, but not falling over.