Warming Up Before Exercise May Not Be Necessary

I used to play racquetball. I played on a league and got to be pretty good. One of the guys that I used to play was a former college football player. He liked to play full-contact racquetball. He would slam you up against the wall as often as he could. But I was still able to beat him. We usually split games.

Before he would play me he used to warm up for about ten minutes, doing stretches. It drove me crazy because when I got there, I was ready to play. He would always tell me that you had to warm up before any kind of exercise or sports or otherwise you might hurt yourself.

The problem was that he seemed not only to avoid injuring himself. But also inflict some on me. I was more afraid of him slamming me against the wall or driving the ball into my face than I was of getting injured by not doing my stretches. \

Seems that to a certain extent I was right. According to MedPage Today:

"Stretching before a run is not all it's cracked up to be for injury prevention, a researcher suggested here. In a three-month randomized trial, self-reported injury rates that prevented running for more than three days were 16% both among the 600 participants who stretched before starting their regular runs and in the 798 who were told not to stretch."

Doing warm up exercises did seem to help prevent the injuries that were more serious and required a doctor's attention. Most doctors who specialize in sports injuries have always advocated that you do warm up exercises before you start any vigorous exercise, especially for seniors. But research has not always proven this to be true.

Think about this: Back in the day when we were commonly the victim of predators, our bodies were designed to go from resting to running very fast at a moment's notice. Those that hesitated and did warm up exercises probably didn't have to worry about sore muscles because they were eaten. I don't think that our design has changed very much over the years.

Talk to any long distance runner and they will probably tell you that they always warm up before running, but many of them still have a long list of injuries over their career. It might be a little hard though to find a runner that doesn't warm up. It's just not the conventional wisdom. I guess it's better to be safe than sorry despite the research.

Source: http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AAOS/24930