Warm-Up Essentials for Athletes: Enhance Performance & Prevent Injuries

Posted on Dec 9, 2024 in Physical Education

Warm-Up Essentials for Athletes: Enhance Performance and Prevent Injuries

Heat is a very common term used throughout the language associated with physical activity. You cannot have a physical education class, a training session, or competition sports activities without a good warm-up.

The warm-up can be tailored for different sporting disciplines, according to the objectives of each, and the peculiarities of the movements and actions both during sports practice and when taken as part of a class of physical education. It can also be used when working in therapeutic physical education classes (health promotion).

In all these cases, the human body has the same members but may not respond similarly in functional segments. That is why within specialty sports competitions, physical education classes, etc., according to their objectives, the human organism will present many common responses, and others similar to all of its varied manifestations.

During the warm-up, we must remember to prepare for the sensorimotor adaptations that every physical activity involves. These adaptations do not correspond to the same sex, age, knowledge and development cycles, sexual maturity, and intellectual conditions.

The physical education teacher, coach, trainer, activist, etc., must know or at least have information projected to dominate sports and physical activities in which we consider important, among others:

Bones, joints, and muscles: Passive members of the movement.
Nervous activity, nervous tissue, and nervous system: The active component system of movement, the chief organizer of the sensorimotor capabilities of the system.
Reflex activities and capabilities, coordination.
Endocrine regulation.
Arterial vascular, venous, and lymphatic capillary function.
Intra-articular synovial fluid, densities and movements, electrolyte balance, hydrostatic pressures.
Respiration, mitochondria, active transport, gas exchange, oxygen consumption, energy expenditure, heart rate, blood pressure.
Postural and spatial controls, biomechanics, and movement application.

Warming up before any kind of physical education, sports training, etc., has bases in the more concrete circulatory and thermoregulatory processes. It creates the conditions for gas exchange and real breathing at cellular levels while ensuring the elimination of non-assimilable or harmful products from the body.

What Should a Warm-Up Ensure?

Optimal oxygenation of joint relations.
Periarticular nutrition.
Adequate muscular functional capillaries.
Regularity of arteriovenous hydrostatic pressures.
Stability in the frequencies of cardiac work.
Easy and fast recuperative processes.
Easy intrafascial muscle sensor processes.
Adequate control of muscle thermoregulation.
Bilateral thermoregulatory surface stability.
Increase of venous and lymphatic return.
Prophylaxis to promote the formation of varicose veins.
Increased functionality of endothelial lymphatic valves.
Adequate stimulation of vascular smooth fibers.
Elimination of intramuscular and joint toxic substances.
Increased functionality of motor units.
Better peripheral neurological working demonstration.
Better circulatory dissemination of articular cartilage.
Adequate lubrication of joint fluid (synovial).
Adequate synovial permeability of sinusoids.
Prevention of intra-articular issues.
Decreased collagen friction in joints.
Avoid dispersion of joint collagen.
Improved relations between the layers of articular cartilage.
Better joint working demonstration of collagen.
Facilitation of the best direction of movement.
Reduced energy consumption.
Better quality of performance.

Useful Tip

Recall that the forms of movement to which the human system is subjected can be extremely varied and different, particularly in the feet and arms. Examples include floating in synchronized swimming, swimming, sprinting or endurance running, a strong move in baseball, football, or volleyball, or during physical exercises in a physical education class, and so on.

Hence, we must bear in mind the need to address the biological preparation of heating, the warming itself. All the time and effort you will devote is little if we want the most effective response and harmonious development of the human organism, with the aim not only to reach sports stardom but to achieve it with greater capacity, potential, and organizational efficiency.

We’re not wrong when we say that training allows the knowledge and mastery of the technique and tactics of a sport, that physical education contributes to the integral and harmonious development through physical activity, but the capacity, energy consumption, and performance capabilities are indivisible from the warm-up.

Warm-Up: Its Importance and Methodology

Concept

It is the optimum arrangement of the athletes to face the tasks in training or before a game, as it prepares the body to meet the high demands, avoid injury, and ensure the effectiveness of the stimuli.

Main Tasks of a Warm-Up

Includes related muscle relaxation and restoring their elasticity.
Heating and Pre-Load: Includes increased cardiac stroke and minute heart rate, blood mobilization of deposits, opening of the capillaries, strengthening of pulmonary ventilation, and elevation of body temperature.
Performs motor lifting techniques and individual tactics, achieving optimum performance capacity.
Psychological Preparation: Replacement of a state of excitement for the main tasks, the athlete adapts to external conditions to acquire a sense of security and scope of the provision of optimal performance.

Differentiating Warm-Ups

When analyzing the warm-up, we must consider its purpose, since the warm-up performed before a game and that performed before a training session within the normal frequency are different. Warming up before a game has a broader content than before a training session because it needs to broadly raise the performance of all the physical qualities (movement and technical skills), while warming up in a training session addresses only one or two objectives, often against a specific requirement.

A. Time Duration

Before the game: 25 to 35 minutes for trained players and regularly 35 to 45 for well-trained players.
Volume ratio between the general and specific warm-up for well-trained players: One-third of the volume for general warming and two-thirds for specific warming.

B. Tournament Considerations

If players have trained well in the tournament and the team has to play every day, then reduce the duration of heating time and apply these to special or specific warming because the reflexes have been reactivated through previous games.
The relationship between the volume of general and specific heat is approximately two-thirds of the volume for the general warming and one-third for the specific heat.

The amount of time for general warming is dependent upon:

The team’s training state.
Weather conditions.
Type of competition or tournament.
Objective of the warm-up.

As we see, there are two types of heating which have different goals:

General Warm-Up

Prepare the body for a great performance available. It can be done with the ball and without it. You should use all means of basic gymnastics that run at low intensity at first, gradually raising the requirement to implement these. Usually, sweat on the players is a good sign that the goal has been achieved.

Specific Warm-Up

Prepare the player for the first task in training or for specific activities or actions before the game. It is regularly performed with the ball, but sometimes you have to include the same defensive movements.

Warm-Up Content Before a Game (Not Standard)

Exercises for the joints of the knees, ankles, and hips.
Run around the rim of the opponent with minimum speed, making the run with support in the forefoot.
Exercises for the muscles of the shoulders, arm swings, giving these circular movements, adding exercises to their wrists.
Normal running and short sprint running with the most elevating the legs, buttocks running playing with heels, several sprint events, and other variations.
Gymnastic exercises: flexion and rotation of the trunk (treatment of the spine), rotation of the hips, around the front and sides, and so on. Jumping off on one and both legs.
Run at average speed around the heating area, ending with defensive movements, especially landslides.

Specific Warm-Up Content

Shots under the hoop in motion.
Shots in suspension.
Free throws. Between two or three minutes to relax, whether the aim of reactivating the dynamic stereotype of the game itself.

Warming up before the game should be trained as any other element, since it is a part of the competition, and when done poorly, it leads to a clear decrease in the athlete’s performance.

The most common errors committed during training are:

Raising the load very quickly.
Applying a load too low or too high.

The same principles of warming up before the game are also transferable to warming up before training, only that the goals are different since the tasks of training are so different that they can only be directed to general aspects such as:

Development of speed.
Development of resistance to speed.
Technical and tactical development.

Recommended Methods for Performing a Warm-Up

If we do have some time to warm up, no special process is needed.

If the session is done in the winter and gymnastics are scheduled to continue, it is more prudent to begin the training unit with approved long-distance running and then gymnastic exercises, which are generally included in means for the warm-up.

It is good that the players learn a set of exercises to run one after the other, thus less time is lost in unnecessary waiting or if the warm-up is interrupted for any reason.

In winter, we must ensure that more experienced players do light running and jumping between exercises.

Example:

Assaults (light running-jumps).
Exercises for shoulders.

The warm-up in sets of 3 x 3 is effective when dealing with players with a low level of preparedness.

The use of technical exercises is only recommended when there is little time for heating. This is often presented to us for any reason when we reach the area of play:

Example:

Transport dribbling individually.
1 x 1 in the middle ground, with passive defense.
Shots under the hoop in motion.
Jump shot after dribble.
Passes jumping in pairs (facing each other).
Free throws.

In practice, massage is also used for heating. As a result of rubbing the surface of the body and muscle movement, they loosen and relax, and blood vessels expand, being more economical to supply blood to the muscles. Undoubtedly, both are useful to the athlete, but bear in mind that massage cannot replace the heating carried out through physical exercise.

Usually, it is an advantage to make use of massage in the dressing room before the practice session or game before active warming. If the team does not have a masseur, it is best that a doctor shows the athletes some methods to apply self-massage.

Some players rub their legs with liniment. A characteristic feature of these massages is that in a few minutes after rubbing, the skin surface is heated, and the player feels subjectively as if all muscles were hot. This method is useful in cold weather because it heats the body surface.

Special Heating Methods Used for Special Conditions

Travel

Before the game, there is insufficient time for natural relaxation to release members of stiffness caused by travel.

If the team travels by bus: Players should take an active walk of about 400 or 500 meters after one hour. If the team travels by air in their own country, there should be no problems.
Trip length: When a trip is longer and arrives shortly before the game, it is recommended that athletes not sit constantly but must stop from time to time and walk for a few minutes.

Traveling by rail is much more convenient than traveling by bus. Basketball players can stand and walk during their trip, get off at stations on and off for longer stays combined with relaxation exercises and gymnastics.

Other situations that may arise are the short time between arrival in the city and the start of the game itself. Players must strive to change their wardrobe, among other duties.

Tasks of a Warm-Up

Relaxation

Muscle relaxation.
Reinstatement of optimal muscle elasticity.

Heating and Pre-Load

Increased stroke and cardiac output.
Mobilization of blood reservoirs.
Opening of capillaries.
Strengthening pulmonary ventilation.
Elevation of body temperature.

Regulating Motor Skills

Elevation of individual technique.
Achieving a high-capacity performance and recreation.

Psychological Preparation

Create a state of excitement and concentration for major tasks.
Adapt to external conditions.
Create a sense of security.
Create a high performance available.