Ten thousand steps and more. Every athlete knows how much warming up is an integral part of practice. It is an essential routine. It improves performance and the physiological mechanisms that underlie it, as shown by a 2015 literature review, led by Australian Courtney McGowan’s team. The increase in muscle temperature is the essential factor.
“It only takes ten to fifteen minutes of activity to raise muscle temperature by 3°C to 4°C”says Gaël Guilhem, director of the Sport, Expertise and Performance Laboratory at Insep, in the journal of the institute Sports Reflection. Gold, “when we increase muscle temperature by 1°C, muscle performance improves by 2%observes Sébastien Ratel, teacher-researcher in exercise physiology at the University of Clermont-Auvergne. And the height of a jump can increase by 6% to 8%”. “In general, a warm-up lasts fifteen to twenty minutes. The goal is to increase the temperature of the muscle and the diameter of the vessels, to facilitate the transport of oxygen from the blood to the working muscles.summarizes the researcher.
Knee raises, buttocks heels, chased steps… In addition to the muscle groups, these movements mobilize the joints. The warm-up period ” oil” these through the production of synovial fluid (produced by the synovial membrane). But is it likely to reduce injuries? “This is probably the case because raising the temperature of the muscles makes it possible to lower their stiffness in the muscles and that of the tissues.replies Sébastien Ratel. It is not advisable to play sports in the cold, without warming up, there seems to be more muscle strains, sprains, ligaments can be affected. » It is therefore preferable to integrate dynamic exercises and stretching and proprioception exercises, that is the perception of the position of the different parts of the body, into the warm-up. This is even more important when the temperatures are low. Finally, any warm-up ends with speed exercises, short sprints, jumps, to get closer to the activity itself, at the intensity targeted during competitions.
Effects in the first minutes
Sébastien Ratel’s team wanted to know if a standardized dynamic warm-up had the same effect on explosive performance depending on the child’s level of maturation. The study which will soon be published in Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research compared prepubertal children aged 8-11 and postpubertal adolescents aged 15-16. They all practiced the same dynamic, classic warm-up in team sports (football, rugby, volleyball, basketball, etc.).
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