Warm Up and Injury Prevention
Hi everyone! Since there are now fewer opportunities to workout in gyms, I wanted to share with all of you some steps we can take to prevent injuries when doing home workouts.
Warm up
Workouts can be stressful on your muscles and joints, therefore it is important to prepare the body for any activity. One of the biggest contributors to injury in athletic performance is a poor warm-up!
There are 2 main goals/benefits for an effective warm up:
Increase in body temperature, which increases flow of oxygen to the muscles and decreases muscle stiffness
Increase in speed and force of muscle contractions
A systematic review of 32 studies demonstrated that proper warm-up was shown to improve performance in 79% of cases. There is no consensus on an optimal warm-up procedure since this is heavily dependent on the workout or sports program, but the general recommendation is to perform:
a period of aerobic exercise
dynamic stretching
period of activity similar to the event they are about to perform
The intensity and mode of warm-up should be catered to the type of activity to be performed.
For example, a randomized controlled trial examining maximum strength performance demonstrated that long duration and low intensity warm-ups (eg. 15min at 40% VO2max) resulted in the greatest improvement in strength performance.
For sport-based performance, the most effective pre-competition strategy was an active warm-up completed at an intensity just above the anaerobic threshold (ie. med-high intensity) for 12-16 minutes. This should include drills that incorporate sport-specific movement patterns in order to prime neural pathways and increase neuromuscular activation.
One of the most important factors of a proper warm-up is to *literally* warm up your muscle tissues. An increase in 1-3 degrees in muscle temperature has been shown to improve glycogen availability (ie. more energy to fuel your muscles), improve neural transmission (ie. faster reaction, better coordination), and increase muscle fibre conduction velocity (ie. be able to have faster and higher power output). In practical terms, an easy rule of thumb is that you should break a medium-level sweat, and your muscles should feel warm on contact.
Based on the recommended procedure, here is an example of a warm up that can be done at home:
(3-5 min) steady state or intervals of aerobic movements such as jumping jacks, high knees, burpees, skip rope
(5 min) dynamic stretching: head to toe, with focus on shoulder, T-spine, and hip mobility
(3 min) priming of movements in the workout in small sets or with reduced weight