Raise the pulse and prime the first touch with continuous passing and movement. Keep everyone moving, receive across the body, and switch the play with a firm diagonal.
Mark a 15x15 yard diamond with four cones, a player on each with one ball. Pass around the diamond and, on a call, switch it diagonally through the middle. After every pass, jog to a new position so the group is always moving. Build from two touches to one, and add a second ball once the pattern flows.
Short passing does not raise a heart rate. A group standing in a circle playing five-yard passes is doing something pleasant that leaves them exactly as cold as when they started, which is why so many warm-ups end with a coach adding laps at the finish. The diagonal is what fixes that, and it is the reason to choose this format over an ordinary passing square.
A firm switch across the area forces somebody to travel to receive it, and travelling is what lifts the pulse. Build the exercise so a long ball comes every few passes rather than occasionally, and the intensity looks after itself without anybody being sent running.
Moving after the pass is the other half of the same mechanism. A player who passes and stands still has done ten yards of work in a minute. A player who passes and immediately relocates to a new angle has done sixty, and the instruction to never admire the pass is doing physiological work as well as technical work.
Receiving across the body is worth insisting on even here. Taking the ball on the far foot means the next pass can go either way, and it costs nothing to build the habit during the part of the session where nobody is under pressure.
Keep the passing weight firm rather than gentle. This is not a cool-down, and a warm-up played at walking weight primes nothing. The distinction between this and a genuine technical session is the absence of stoppages, not the absence of intensity.
Save it to your private drills, then change the animation, adjust positions, swap equipment, or drop it into a session block. Or start from a blank pitch and build your own.