17.01.07

Warm-up correspondance

Posted in Work at 10:23 pm by alby

I decided to write to someone in a Sports dept at one of the local universities.  The brief was “Warm-up? Why?” and she responded wonderfully.  Here’s her reply in full: (I’m not going to name her as I didn’t say I would post this publically)

I am an exercise physiologist, hockey coach and mother of a child who swim trains. My view is that the main importance of the warm-up relates to familiarization with the environment. For example in hockey it is important to get a feel for the run of the ball on the pitch, as every pitch is different [this bit was new to me, good idea though] and in swimming it is crucial to have tried backstroke starts, used the block got a feel for the water and the walls on turns [as I’ve mentioned before it’s a good idea to make sure your body bits will do the movements you need for the task ahead]. 

Also as you mention it is a crucial time for phychological preparation. In terms of imporving performance I don’t have any published papers on this but we have undertaken a lab class at the University for a few years where we heat the students legs passively in a water bath or have them warm-up physically or do not warm-up at all before a 2 30 s cycle ergoemter sprints. generally the peak power output is a little higher (perhaps 10 watss after warming up). This could obviously be a crucial performance difference for sprinters. However there is also a tendency for a little greater fatigue over the 30 s and in the second sprint after warming up.[so a slight performance improvement but more fatigue afterwards] 

In terms of injury prevention I have not investigated this at all, but over my own intenational hockey career spaning 16 years including junior hockey and watching my own chilren play sport I have never seen an athlete or child injured early in the session (adults who don’t notmally exercise though can be injured early in a session simply because they are undertaking an unaccustomed exercise for which they are not physically prepared). In my view injuries come when the athletes are fatigued and injury prevention is therefore due to fitness, strength, flexibility and good technique. [so again injury is caused by unaccustomed exercise, as I said I don’t know how many times] 

Hope these thoughts are of some interest. In my view the warm-up is best used to work on something the athlete needs to work on anyway such as good footwork [so use the time to practise drills, seems reasonable to me as that’s probably the only time you’d bother to practise such, eg how many kids would bother with flexibility training away from the class or session?]  

I’m impressed.  A shame there’s no proper full-on research to quote though.  I’ll have a go at condensing this to the UF boards soonish. I’m impressed.  A shame there’s no proper full-on research to quote though.  I’ll have a go at condensing this to the UF boards soonish.

Have fun.

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