Warm Up Before Ranked: A 3-Minute Routine
Cold hands miss shots. Three minutes of wrists, shoulders, and eyes before you queue — so your aim is warm on round one, not round four.
Cold hands miss shots. If your first ranked game is always your worst, you're not unlucky — you're warming up on the clock. Here's a three-minute routine you run before you queue, not during placement.
Why warm up at all
Your hands, wrists, and eyes are the hardware. Going from idle to flick-shots cold is like sprinting without a single stride out — the first few minutes are stiff, and in ranked those minutes cost you rounds.
The 3-minute routine
- Wrist circles — 30s each direction. Loosen the joint that does every micro-adjust.
- Finger spreads — 30s. Open the hand wide, close to a fist, repeat. Wakes up trigger and tracking fingers.
- Shoulder rolls — 30s. Backwards, slow. Drops the hunch before it becomes hour-three neck.
- Eyes: 20-20-20 once — 20s. Look at something ~20 feet away for 20 seconds. Resets focus before the screen owns it.
Make it automatic
The trick isn't the moves — it's doing them every session. Tie it to the launcher: client open → routine → queue. Keep the streak and the warm-up stops being a chore and starts being the thing that makes round one feel like round four.