What is the purpose of warming up? The answer is: “Prepare for competition or training.” It’s very simple, but sometimes this gets forgotten. With this idea in mind, we can reformulate the concept of the title of this article into something like “How to Prepare to Play Volleyball”. It doesn’t roll on the tongue smoothly, but it makes the point.
So, rephrasing our topic, let me ask another question. Does running and stretching get you ready to play volleyball?
If you don’t know the answer to that, it’s a resounding “no!” There are two reasons for this.
First, sprinting plays absolutely no role in volleyball, so just running a few laps around the court won’t get you ready to play in any meaningful way. Sure, if you do it enough, your legs will get warm, but not in a way that supports the kind of explosive movement you’ll perform at the whistle. Let’s not even get into the fact that it does nothing for major body parts like the shoulders and core.
“But this is where the stretching part comes in,” you might be thinking.
You hate to burst your bubble, but the second problem with running and stretching is static stretching of the kind we often see serving little purpose before competition or training. Research has found no evidence that it helps prevent infection. In fact, there are some suggestions that can temporarily reduce performance by forcing muscles to relax. Static stretching is good for developing flexibility once your muscles are already warmed up, but that’s about it.
So what is the alternative?
Dynamic warm-ups have become common practice at nearly all levels of play in recent years. A quick Google or YouTube search will bring you plenty of examples of these types of actions. They are favored because they put muscles and joints through active range-of-motion movements, increasing blood flow in a manner akin to the way the body is used to in competition.
Or you could just do the volleyball stuff.
If you really want to get ready to play volleyball, do what is involved in playing volleyball. There’s a reason peppers are such a popular part of pre-game and pre-training routines. It involves most of the skills one is prepared to use, and if done properly, can do a great job of warming up muscles and joints.
This isn’t suggesting the only thing a player should do to warm up is pass the batting combination with a partner, though. I’m just making a point that preparing to play might be better by performing volleyball skills and movements in a less intense way. In this way, not only your body is warmed up, but also your mind, which is at least as important.