'The 11+' - The best way to warm-up!

Wednesday, 17. June 2009 - IndianFootball.Com reporter

Experts have developed a warm-up programme to prevent footballers from injuries. Find out how to warm-up correctly...

Warming up prior to playing and training is a matter of routine for any serious player. A smart warm-up not only improves your performance, but also helps you to prevent injuries. "The 11+", the new injury prevention programme from FIFA's Medical Assessment and Research Centre (F-MARC), provides a complete, football-specific warm-up and can easily be integrated into a daily training routine.

A study, conducted by the FIFA Medical Centre of Excellence, showed that "The 11+" warm-up reduced total injuries by a third and severe injuries by almost a half. By improving strength, awareness and neuromuscular control the programme is targeting the most common injury types in football targeting the most common injury types in football, i.e. ankle and knee sprains, and injuries to the groin and hamstring. The programme was designed based on previous research and combines key exercises from the "F-MARC 11"-program and the "PEP"-program with running exercises.

"The 11+" is divided into three parts: it starts off with running exercises (Part I), moves on to six exercises with three levels of increasing difficulty to improve strength, balance, muscle control and core stability (Part II), and concludes with further running exercises (Part III). The different levels of difficulty increase the programme's effectiveness and allow coaches and players to individually adapt the programme. "The 11+" takes approx. 20 minutes to complete and replaces the usual warm-up before training. Prior to playing a match, only the running exercises are performed, for about ten minutes.

Although specifically developed for football, the "The 11+" study has already attracted the attention of other sports.

Let's start to warm-up correctly! Download "The 11+" training plan:
http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/afdeveloping/medical/97/48/07/11+_13012009.pdf