It may not seem like it, but some of the most important work a World Cup player can do on matchday takes place before the game even begins.Warming up the muscles, tendons and ligaments that are going to help propel you around the pitch is a familiar process to anyone who plays amateur football, but for those at the top of the sport, it is utterly essential — to guard against injuries and ensure they can perform at their best from the first whistle.But just because they are elite athletes does not mean their routines are beyond us mere mortals.To help you implement some of what you’re seeing at the World Cup into your own pre-match routine, The Athletic consulted James Redden, a coach at 292 Performance who has worked with clubs including Tottenham Hotspur and Luton Town.He has devised a warm-up routine that should take around 15 minutes to complete and comprises five different sections.“The work done at the start is more about injury prevention,” says Redden, “which then enables you to do the performance stuff later. The first two stages are probably 75 per cent injury prevention and priming for performance. And the last three stages are 75 per cent performance.“But you’re only able to do the performance bit if you’ve done the bit before, so they work together. And they’re both as important as each other. If you’re injured, you can’t perform. Likewise, if you start a game and you’re not injured but you’re not ready to go, you might as well be injured.”First section: Floor-based mobility and activationHow To Warm Up Like A Soccer Star, Pt. 1Sarah ShephardRedden picks two exercises here, with the first one called a 90-90 hip switch to hip extension. The focus here is on unlocking the hips, which Redden says is something all footballers could benefit from.“Footballers get tight hips from repeated ball striking,” he explains, “so I always go to hips first of all and then hamstrings, because they do lots of sprinting and hamstring injuries are the most common injury in football.“But generally, tight hips lead to tight hamstrings. So if you can unlock your hips, you then unlock your hamstrings.”The second exercise is a double-leg glute bridge and hold, which focuses on activating those hamstrings and glutes — both essential muscles in supporting acceleration and top speed.Second section: Standing, movement-based mobility and activationHow To Warm Up Like A Soccer Star, Pt. 2Sarah ShephardFor this, Redden selects two single-leg exercises: a single-leg squat to knee hug and lunge (“this one takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s excellent once you’ve got the hang of it”) and a single-leg arabesque.“Everything in football is done on a single leg, really,” he explains. “When accelerating, you’re really pushing off one. When you jump, most players lead with a run to jump off one leg. When you change direction, you load on one to push away.