"preparatory exercise" is an acceptable phrase in written English.
You can use it when referring to an exercise that is intended to prepare someone for a more difficult or involved task. For example, "Before engaging in the exam, we completed a few preparatory exercises to ensure we were well-prepared."
It is to open officially on Thursday, but dinners were served throughout February, Mondays through Fridays, as a preparatory exercise.
The war came next, and as Aide-de-Camp to General J. F. Ryan he was able to spend his Saturday afternoons writing a hundred and twenty-thousand word novel, "The Romantic Egotist", which was merely a preparatory exercise apparently.
In the summer of 1995, when my parents told my sister and me that we'd be moving to Seattle, I started listening to Nirvana as a kind of preparatory exercise.
"Playoff time is what we've all been waiting for," Wade told reporters after the Heat finished the preparatory exercise of the regular season Thursday night with the fourth-best record in the N.B.A. Wade has a championship ring, so he floats above the fury that is sure to again envelop his world-famous co-star.
The main preparatory exercise was the Hazard Map Activity.
Also on Thursday, Brazil launched its first naval preparatory exercise ahead of the World Cup.
The GAO also notes a real lack of recovery planning, including a shortage of preparatory exercises.
Most now turn up early for training and perform preparatory exercises.
The other sports ball games and hockey were considered merely diversions or at best preparatory exercises.
Note that each laboratory will generally consist of (1) a set of background readings on the biological and computational theory behind the assignment; (2) a set of 'warm-up' preparatory exercises to gain familiarity with the software and the assignment domain, perhaps including some non-computer problems; and (3) the main assignment itself, which will be computer-based.
Prolegomena should by contrast be preparatory exercises; they ought more to indicate what needs to be done in order to bring a science into existence if possible, than to present the science itself.
