Now, if you know me, you would know that I would have jumped at the chance to review an article like this, particularly when the findings were so positive. I must sound like a broken record at work giving out advice to do some warming up prior to exercising, and this kind of validation is so sweet.

A warm-up program was developed and taught to 1055 teenage soccer playing girls. The warm-up consisted of 8 minutes of slow jogging, stretching, and some strength and balance exercises, then 2 minutes of faster running.

So obviously, for some of you, this would be excessive. But look at the results – significant reductions in the overall number of injuries, the number of overuse injuries (nearly half the risk), and the number of severe injuries (those requiring a month off from training, and again, the risk was about half!). A large number of people (1000+) followed for a long period of time (8 months), these really are results you can bank on.

In my opinion, for people just doing general fitness, you really don’t need to go to the lengths outlined in this study. If you were to do some light jogging, a few stretches, and then include whichever strength exercises you may have been given during rehabilitation (eg core abdominal activation, medial knee muscle activation, ankle balance receptor activation, even something as simple as standing on one foot with your eyes shut or doing some calf raises with a slow lowering phase) you can reasonably expect to reduce your likelihood of injury.

In this study they showed that in your warmup you want to do something similar to the activity you are about to undertake. So if you’re going for a run, do some slow jogging and stretch your muscles. If you’re lifiting weights, do a set or two at a lighter weight. The conclusions of this study are clear, you should warm-up.

http://thegoodhealthjournal.com/?p=54