Warm up means to prepare your body for exercise, or to make food warm again. In the first meaning, it is used for sport and also for getting your voice ready before a performance or an exam: “warm up before a run”. In the second, it is about food that has gone cold: “warm up the soup”. The activity itself is “a warm-up”.
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warm up (before + activity); do a warm-up; warm up + food; warm it up
- Always warm up for at least ten minutes before you go for a long run.
- Before the speaking test, I warmed up by describing photos aloud for five minutes.
- There's some pasta left from yesterday, so I'll warm it up for lunch.
What changed
First versionBefore every match, we make a warm-up for about ten minutes.
RevisionBefore every match, we do a warm-up for about ten minutes.
“Make” can look right, since it goes with many nouns for actions. But “warm-up”, like “exercise”, takes “do”: “do a warm-up”. You can also say it more simply with the verb alone: we warm up for ten minutes.
After training, you do the opposite and cool down: you walk slowly and stretch so that your heart rate settles. After the match, the players walked slowly around the pitch to cool down.
Your turn
Spend ten minutes ___ before a hard workout, or you might hurt your back.
Show the answer
warming up — The sentence is about getting your body ready for a workout, which is “warming up”. “Heat up” means to make something hot: food, water or a room, but not your muscles before exercise, even though both phrases are about getting warmer.
Describe how you get ready for a workout, a performance or an exam. Say what you do to warm up and how long it takes.
Before my Saturday football game, I warm up with fifteen minutes of jogging and stretching.
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