10/10/2016
Analysis a paper: Warm-up revisited – the ‘ramp’ method of optimising performance preparation. Ian Jeffrey’s
Today a few athletes at any level train or compete attempt doing a warm up. However, while the general principles surrounding the need to warm up remain valid. A large body of evidence is building up.
Rationale behind why we warm up
The goal of the warm up is to prepare the athlete mentally and physical for exercise or competition. A well designed warm up can increase muscle temperature and blood flow around the body. These effects can have the following positive effects on performance;
• Faster muscle contraction and relaxation of both agonist and antagonist muscle
• Improvements in rate of force development and reaction time
• Improvements in muscle strength and power
• Increase blood flow to active muscles
• The reduction risk of injury prevention is unclear, the evidence suggests a positive effect
A well designed warm up can clearly have a positive effect on performance, and useful way of looking at warm up is as “performance preparation”, enabling an athlete to perform maximally in their workout or competition.
Coaching opportunity
One of the challenges facing coach’s these days especially for amateur sports is time is limited. A lot of coaches wouldn’t allow S/C coaches do a proper warm up they rather see the players doing what is specific for their sport. Planning of the warm up is as important as planning the main session itself. By carefully selecting activities the warm up can contribute greatly to the overall training programme, and should be in balance with the aim of the overall session. Most warm ups will last from 10-30 minutes.
Traditional components of a warm up
If the aim of a warm up is to prepare for competition or practice, the optimal warm up is likely to vary between sports and warm ups need to be constructed that address the specific needs of both the athlete and sport. While warm up has traditionally focussed on energy systems and muscular aspects of the physiological processes the neurological aspects of warm up have often been overlooked. For optimal effectiveness, a warm up needs to provide optimum preparation in all aspects of performance.
Key phases have traditionally been identified a general warm up and a specific warm up. The general phase has been associated with increases heart flow, respiration rate, blood flow, and joint fluid viscosity. And normally consists of light activities such as jogging. The specific phase has traditionally consisted of stretching and sport specific movements.
The use of stretching
The greatest debate regarding warm up at present is the use of static stretching. Static stretching has become a part of many warm up routines. However, there is little, if any, evidence that stretching pre or post participation prevents injury. In term of performance decrements after static stretching, research has indicated potential decrements in force production, power. Running speed, reaction time and strength endurance. PNF (Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation) and ballistic stretching effects performance. While some studies have found that static stretching has no effect on performance, there is evidence to question the use of static stretching in warm up. To look at other methods which do not have the potential to reduce performance, and which may offer more functional methods of enhancing performance.
Dynamic stretching on the other hand does not seem to cause the performance reduction effects. Additional, the dynamic methods to be used in functional warm ups. Effective dynamic stretches also require that the muscle is activated through range of movement. Given this, dynamic stretching may be the most suitable method of mobilisation during warm up for a number of sports. It is important to not however, that static stretching before activity might increase performance in sports that require an increase range of motion such as gymnastics.
Towards a new classification of warm up
RAMP system may provide a method by which warm up activities can be classified and constructed. This system identified three key phases of effective warm ups.
1. Raise
2. Activate and Mobilise
3. Potentiate
Raise
This phase has the aim of elevating body temperatures, heart rate, respiration rate, blood flow and joint fluid viscosity. The methods used to achieve it often represents perhaps the biggest waste of valuable training time, with the common jog around the field still common sight. This phase can be dedicated to movements skills and/or sport skills. By identifying elements such as key moment patterns or techniques involved in a sport.
Activation and mobilize
The phase has two key aims
1. To activate key muscle groups
2. To mobilize key joints and ranges of motion used in the sport
In terms of activation the inclusion of this will depend upon the needs of the athlete sport. Where key muscles groups may need to be stimulated exercise can be selected that target these key muscles. This can often involve exercise traditionally associated with prehab such as mini bands routines, glute bridges and overhead squat.
The achievement of the mobilization phase of the warm up takes a different approach. Rather than focus on individual muscles, the approach is to work on movements. Static stretching involves a relaxation of the muscle, the activation and mobilization approach involves actively working a muscle through its range of motion, which has the effect of activating all of the key muscles involve directly in the movements and also in the stabilisation of the body through and movements.
In designing activating and mobilisation phase the S/C coach needs to identify the key muscles that need to be activated in order to produce these movements. By focusing on movements, many muscles groups can be activated and mobilised with the same movement rather than with the single muscle approach of traditional static stretches routines.
Potentiation
This phase of the warm up will see gradual shift towards the actual sport and will normally involve sport specific activities of increasing intensity. The nature of the activities will depend upon the sport specific example a sprint workout will comprise of sprint drills and sprints of increasing intensity. What is important is that a series of activities are engaged in that allow the athlete to achieve their peak performance when the workout or competition begins. For running workouts, speed and agility drills are ideal at this time, in that they provide very real training benefit.
Conclusion
The aim of the warm up must be always kept in mind, that is to ensure optimal preparation performance, and activities should be selected that provide for raising, activation, mobilisation and potentiation, but without the development of undue fatigue.
