RAMP Warm Up for Runners

PerformanceRunningWarm Up
Written By Cat Hoh

Ten minutes of jogging and a few leg swings takes ten minutes. It doesn’t tell you whether the runner is ready for the session. RAMP fixes that by giving the warm-up an order, Raise, Activate, Mobilise, Potentiate, where each phase has one job and sets up the next. An athlete who jogs straight into a maximal acceleration hasn’t been prepared for it, whatever the clock says about time spent.

Ian Jeffreys introduced the method in 2007 and has refined it since (Jeffreys 2007; 2017). This guide takes the Australian Athletics RAMP poster for runners and adds what a poster has no room for: how to build each phase, how the warm-up changes between an easy run and race day, when to land the last hard efforts, and where static stretching fits.

Four phases, one job each

The order inside each phase matters as much as the order between them. Every phase starts with something the athlete can do half asleep and builds toward something that looks like the session.

Figure 01 / Interactive

The four phases, from first step to session-ready

Phase / tap to change

Raise Activate Mobilise Potentiate
4–5min  /  Phase 01

Raise. Gradually elevates heart rate, breathing and body temperature to prepare for exercise.

Start

  • Walk into an easy jog
  • Loose arm swings

Build to

  • Easy jog, building pace
  • High knees, march → run
  • Butt kicks
  • Carioca / grapevine

Look for: breathing lifts, movement smooths out.

Simple, rhythmic movement first, building pace before complexity.

2–3min  /  Phase 02

Activate. “Switches on” the muscles a session will rely on, priming them before they’re under load.

Start

  • Double-leg glute bridge
  • Band walks, small steps

Build to

  • Lateral band walks
  • Single-leg glute bridge
  • Single-leg calf raises
  • Dead bug / anti-rotation

Look for: hips stay level, no early fatigue.

Load the muscles the session depends on, starting low-complexity.

2–3min  /  Phase 03

Mobilise. Takes the joints through the range of motion a session will demand.

Start

  • Standing ankle circles
  • Gentle leg swings

Build to

  • Ankle rocks, dorsiflexion
  • Leg swings, front & lateral
  • Walking lunge + t-spine rotation
  • World’s greatest stretch

Look for: smooth range, never forced.

Full range through the joints those muscles are about to move.

2–4min  /  Phase 04

Potentiate. Raises intensity to prepare the nervous system for the specific demands ahead.

Start

  • Skip drills, moderate effort
  • Moderate-pace strides

Build to

  • Skip → A-skip progression
  • Bounds / high-knee skips
  • Strides toward goal pace
  • 2–3 accelerations, high intent

Look for: crisp turnover, not tired.

Technical drills first, then intensity building toward the session.

Sample flow. The times are for a full warm-up and add up to 10–15 minutes, matching the poster’s ring. Exercise examples are drawn from the poster. Structure follows Jeffreys (2007; 2017).

The exercise lists are a menu, not a script. Pick movements the athlete already does well, because a wobbly single-leg bridge is a technique problem, not an activation drill. Move up a step only when the last one looks smooth. The “look for” line is your check: breathing lifts in Raise, hips stay level in Activate, range is smooth in Mobilise, and turnover is crisp in Potentiate.

Match the warm-up to the session

An easy run doesn’t need the warm-up a race does. Raise gets longer as the session gets harder, and Activate, Mobilise and Potentiate go from a light touch to a full set. Pick a session and the ring redraws to show where the minutes go.

Figure 02 / Interactive

How the warm-up changes with the session

Session / tap to change

Easy run Workout Race day
6–10MIN TOTAL10–15MIN TOTAL12–15MIN TOTAL
6–10min, easy run
Raise3–4 minEasy jog
Activate1–2 min1–2 exercises, light
Mobilise1–2 minKeep it brief
Potentiate1–2 min1–2 relaxed strides
10–15min, workout
Raise4–5 minA little longer than an easy day
Activate2–3 minFull 4-exercise set
Mobilise2–3 minFull 4-exercise set
Potentiate2–4 minFull progression, plus 2–3 accelerations
12–15min, race day
Raise5–6 minThe longest Raise of the three
Activate2–3 minFull set
Mobilise2–3 minFull set, unhurried
Potentiate3 minExtended, timed to land 5–7 min before the start

Schematic. Raise minutes and the Activate, Mobilise and Potentiate dose wording come from the poster’s dosage table. The other phase times are estimates fitted so a full warm-up lands inside 10–15 minutes, so they’re a starting point. The easy run is deliberately shorter. Ring segments are proportional to the midpoint of each range.

Raise grows by a few minutes, but the bigger shift is in Potentiate, which goes from a couple of relaxed strides to a timed progression. That’s the phase that leads straight into the hard running, so it’s the one that changes most as the stakes rise.

Land the last efforts, then keep moving

Two timing rules pull against each other, and the skill is in holding both. First, keep the gap between finishing the warm-up and starting the session short, because the raised muscle temperature and nervous-system gains fade once activity stops (McGowan et al. 2015). Second, the lift from Potentiate’s hardest reps takes a few minutes to arrive (Aytaç and İşler 2025).

Figure 03 / Interactive

When does the lift from the last hard reps arrive?

Gap between the last rep and the start / tap to change

0–4 min 5–7 min 8+ min
STRONGEST EFFECTS 024681012 MINUTES AFTER THE LAST POTENTIATE REP THE LIFT START
0–4min after the last rep

Early. The last hard rep is still fresh in the legs, and studies grouped in this interval showed smaller effects than the 5–7 minute group.

The work is done and the lift hasn’t arrived yet.

5–7min after the last rep

The best-supported window. This interval showed the strongest effects in the review’s table, in stronger athletes. Land the last Potentiate reps here.

Individual responses vary widely, so treat it as a starting point, not a rule.

8+min after the last rep

Late. Effects in this group were smaller again, and a longer wait means the wider warm-up gains are fading too.

Standing around counts against the warm-up. Keep the athlete moving.

Schematic. The curve illustrates the recovery-interval groups in Aytaç and İşler (2025), not measured values. That review describes a 3–10 minute window overall and 5–7 minutes as strongest. A 2026 meta-analysis found studies testing anywhere from about 3 to 12 minutes without settling on one optimum, and individual responses vary widely with training history and other factors.

So don’t stretch the warm-up out. Finish the last strides or accelerations about five to seven minutes before the hard running, and use the gap for final instructions, a gear check and the walk to the start, with the athlete moving rather than standing. The gap is short and it has a job to do. Final instructions that drift into ten idle minutes undo both rules at once.

Where static stretching fits

Dynamic movement is the RAMP default, because Mobilise already does the job a held stretch would. A 2024 review of dynamic warm-ups recommends sport-specific dynamic work (Sople and Wilcox 2024), and a network meta-analysis of 35 studies found dynamic stretching gave the best jump and sprint results while static stretching on its own reduced explosive performance (Li et al. 2023).

That’s the power-sport picture, and it’s where the anti-stretching folklore comes from. Runners are a different case.

Figure 04 / Interactive

What stretching in the warm-up did for endurance runners

Warm-up stretching / tap to change

No stretching Static stretching Dynamic stretching

Running economy baseline

Perceived effort baseline

Baseline. Running economy and perceived effort as measured with no stretching in the warm-up.

Running economy better

Perceived effort lower

Better economy, lower effort. Running economy improved and the run felt easier than with no stretching.

Running economy better

Perceived effort lower

Dynamic stretching also beat none. Running economy improved and effort came down against no stretching, the same direction as static.

Schematic. Bar lengths show direction only, not measured values. Crossover study of 8 male endurance runners, mean age 36, who did static, dynamic and no stretching before a run to exhaustion (Faelli et al. 2021). Both stretching methods improved running economy and lowered perceived effort against no stretching. One small study, so hold it loosely.

If an athlete wants to hold a stretch or two, it isn’t undermining the warm-up. For the wider running literature, Warneke et al. (2025) pooled the acute and chronic stretching studies on running economy and is the review to read before you change a squad’s routine.

Four cues for the day

Start easy, build gradually. Don’t rush the Raise.

Choose movements the athlete can already do well.

Finish feeling ready, not tired.

Land the last 1–2 Potentiate reps about 5–7 minutes before the hardest running, then keep moving.

What the research covers, and what it doesn’t

Most warm-up research comes from team-sport athletes, not distance runners. The one RAMP-specific trial behind the poster tested 14 youth soccer players aged 16 to 22 in a crossover design. The RAMP protocol produced faster sprints (4.16 seconds, against 4.22 after static stretching and 4.24 with no warm-up) and higher jumps (32.5 cm, against 30.3 and 29.9) (Girginer et al. 2025). That’s a small sample doing a task that isn’t distance running.

The 2026 meta-analysis of post-activation work added to a general warm-up (33 studies, 12 in the pooled analyses) found a clear gain in countermovement jump height, about 2.4 cm, and no significant pooled benefit for sprinting (Zheng et al. 2026). The case for Potentiate is stronger for jumping and bounding than for straight-line speed, and the evidence in this guide says little directly about distance runners.

Read the timings and dosages here as an opening bet on the athlete in front of you, then adjust from how they feel and run.

References

Cat Hoh
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