This week is a build. By the end of it you should have a written pre-performance routine you could run in your sleep.
Why the warm-up is not enough
A normal warm-up gets the body ready and leaves the head completely cold. Then the whistle goes, and you are asked to make fast decisions with a brain that has been standing in a queue for an hour.
That is why the opening minutes so often feel foggy, and why so many games are given away early by choices nobody would make in the second half.
The four minutes
Minute one — same spot. Find a physical place you go every time. A corner of the field, a particular bench, the end of the bleachers. The place itself starts doing some of the work after a few weeks.
Minute two — six long exhales. In for four, out for six. The out-breath is the part that does the work; a big dramatic inhale usually makes things worse. Six rounds is enough.
Minute three — one rep, from inside your own eyes. Not a highlight reel and not the whole game. One specific moment you expect to face, rehearsed from your own point of view — what you see, where your feet are, what you do. Include it going slightly wrong and you handling it.
Minute four — your cue word. One word you will also use during play. Set. Low. Breathe. Next. Familiar beats clever. Saying it now links it to feeling ready, so it works later when you need it.
The rules that keep it alive
Four minutes, not fifteen. Anything longer gets cut the first time a coach calls you over, and a routine you abandon under pressure is worse than none.
Run it at practice, not only on game day. A routine you have only ever used when it mattered is not a routine — it is a hope.
Write it down. In order. On your phone. If you cannot recite it, you do not have it yet.
This week's work
Write your four minutes tonight and run them before every session this week, including the ones that do not matter. Especially those.
At the end of the week, ask yourself one question: how long into a session does it now take before you feel switched on — and what would you do with those minutes back?
The sport manuals build this out properly for your sport, with the workbook pages to write it on.