RAMP Warm-Up

Systematised warming up for exercise

Summary

The RAMP method, as detailed by Ian Jeffreys, is an attempt to systematise warm-ups in an effective and time-efficient manner. The acronym breaks down as follows:

  • Raise
  • Activation
  • Mobilisation
  • Potentiation

Details

RAMP attempts to take the very hit-and-miss, non-standardised world of warm-ups and update it to reflect a system that is both effective and efficient. Each phase of the warm-up builds on the previous, all of which ultimately follow a thread through into the specific focus of the planned main session. On this page, I hope to offer a brief overview of the four (arguably three, maybe three point five) phases.

Raise

This phase is all about up-shifting those key factors of (physiological) performance. The most obvious one is of course temperature but also includes such things as heart rate, respiration rate, blood flow, muscle elasticity and joint fluid viscosity. This might include elements of walking and jogging and other low intensity movement. I am not tying this down to a time, as every participant is different, every situation is different, every sport is different and every need is different. That said, it's common for this to last for about 5 to 10 minutes (no judgement as to whether this is adequate, too little or too much).

Activation and Mobilisation

I tentatively drop these together as they sort of work together (hence the earlier 3.5 phases comment). There are two key aims here:

  1. to activate the key muscle groups;
  2. to mobilise the key joints/ranges of motion (ROMs) for the planned activity.
This is done through use of patterned movements and exercises to target the desired groups and will be dependent on both the needs of the athlete and the sport. Think traditional prehab exercises for activation and dynamic full ROM patterns for mobilisation. By targeting exercises/movements that hit a number of the key muscles/joints at once, we can make this more time-efficient, possibly activating and mobilising several things with a single movement.
Once again, I'm not outlining specific time recommendations here but it's not uncommon for this "phase and a half" to take roughly the same amount (maybe slightly less) as the raise phase (ie a little over 5 minutes).

Potentiation

The final phase is the money. It's the phase that ramps up (lol) the intensity ready for the session and acts almost as a rehearsal phase where performance is a key requirement of the main session (a race for instance).
The goal here is to choose exercises that are directly relevant and improve effectiveness in main session performance. Think moving (gradually) away from those low intensity movements of the earlier phases to some high intensity stuff to prime our participant. I'm looking at this from the perspective of run coaching as I write this (although I am a trainer in multiple activities, running is the one I currently spend most time in), so for me this would be a good place to introduce drills for speed or for agility (particularly where I'm looking at off-road running).
This might also be the place to try and prime those post-activation performance boosts, although I don't feel qualified enought o elaborate on this aspect of things.
If I were to outline how long people commonly spend on this, I might be unravelling various lengths of string. If basic activation is the goal, then probably shorter than either of the other phases; if turbo-charged performance is the desired outcome, then perhaps a bit longer....

Reference Material

Jeffreys, Ian. "The Warm-Up: Maximize Performance and Improve Long-Term Athletic Development" (2018). Publisher: Human Kinetics