You see it before a game or practice everywhere there’s a ballfield.

Teams positioned in two opposing lines, randomly throwing balls in the general direction of the other line. And then chasing said balls behind them.

Hitters casually knocking balls off tees into the bottom of nets – or over the top. Pitchers sleepwalking through a reps of a K drill or slowly strolling through a walk-through instead of going full speed.

Not just youngling rec teams either. The same behavior can be seen with high school teams, travel ball teams, even college teams.

It’s players sleepwalking through warmups as if they are something to be (barely) tolerated before the “real thing” begins.

That’s unfortunate on many levels, but mostly for what it says about those players’ dedication and desire to play like champions.

You see, champions realize that we are a product of our habits. They also realize the importance of paying attention to details.

Warm-up drills should be about more than just getting your body moving and your muscles loose. They should also be preparing you to play or practice at your highest level.

So if you’re just going through the motions, waiting for practice or the game to start, you’re missing a real opportunity to get better.

Take that hitter who is basically just knocking balls off the tee before a game. Hopefully she knows what she needs to do to hit to her full potential, and what she needs to work on to get there.

So if she’s just taking any old swing to satisfy the requirement of working at that station she could actually be making herself worse instead of better because she’s building habits (such as arm swinging, dropping her hands, or pulling her front side out) that may let her get the ball off the tee but won’t translate into powerful hits in the game.

Or take the pitcher who is sleepwalking through her K drills instead of using that time to focus on whether her arm slot is correct, she is leading her elbow through the back half of the circle, and she is allowing her forearm to whip and pronate into release. She shouldn’t be surprised if her speed is down, her accuracy is off, and her movement pitches aren’t behaving as they should when she goes into a full pitch.

Even the throwing drills that often come right after stretching require more than a half-hearted effort. Consider this: as we have discussed before, 80% of all errors are throwing errors.

Which means if your team can throw better, you can eliminate the source of 8 out of 10 errors. Cutting your errors down from 10 to 2 ought to help you win a few more ballgames, wouldn’t you think? That’s just math.

Yet how many times have you seen initial throwing warmups look more like two firing squads with the worst aim ever lined up opposite of each other?

That would be a great time to be working on throwing mechanics instead of just sharing gossip. Not that there’s anything wrong with talking while you throw. But you have to be able to keep yourself focused on your movements while you chat.

Even stretching needs to be taken seriously if it’s going to help players get ready to play and avoid injury. How many times have you seen players who are supposed to be stretching their hamstrings by kicking their legs straight out and up as high as they can go take three or four steps, raise their legs about hip-high, take another three or four steps, then do the same with the other leg.

Every step should result in a leg raise, not every fourth step. And if young softball players can’t raise their feet any higher than their hips they have some major work to do on their overall conditioning.

Because that’s just pathetic. Maybe less screen time and more time spent moving their bodies would give them more flexibility than a typical 50 year old.

The bottom line is many players seem to think warm-ups are something you do BEFORE you practice or play. But that’s wrong.

Warm-ups are actually a very important part of preparing players to play at the highest level and should be treated as such. If you don’t believe it, just watch any champion warm up.