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30.09.2024

Optimal strength training warm-up | Take your time and go at it gently

Before you start your weight training as a strength athlete in the gym and before you touch a weight, you warm up. You prepare your body for your strength training on a treadmill or other cardio machine. The best way to do this was investigated by Brazilian sports scientists in 2013.

Why warm up?
In the 1970s, researchers conducted experiments in which they had subjects squeeze a dynamometer under various conditions and recorded how much strength the subjects could develop. After immersion in cold water, the forearm muscles work less well and therefore develop less strength. [Percept Mot Skills. 1977 Feb;44(1):323-6.]

Muscle cells perform optimally at a temperature of 37-38 degrees. [Acta Physiol Scand. 1979 Sep;107(1):33-7.] This will not surprise you, because that is the body temperature of a healthy person.

However, skeletal muscles are normally somewhat cooler. If you are not physically active, but lie, sit or stand, your muscles in your legs and arms have a temperature of 30 to 33 degrees. This temperature increases during exercise.

This is the benefit of a systemic warm-up before you start strength training. You increase the temperature of your muscles, so that they are capable of better performance.

Study
Brazilian sports scientists at the University of Sao Paulo conducted an experiment in which 16 male students participated as test subjects. The students had been training with weights for at least a year.

The researchers had young men who had been strength training for at least a year train their legs a few times on a leg press machine. The researchers recorded each time how many kilos the men could just lift one more time.

Before the men started doing leg presses they had to warm up. They had to cycle. Sometimes this took five minutes [SD], other times fifteen minutes [LD].

The intensity with which the men cycled varied as well. On one occasion the men cycled quietly, at forty percent of their maximum oxygen uptake [LI]. At that intensity you can still have a conversation effortlessly. You could maintain the effort for hours. The other time, the men cycled at a slightly higher intensity - at seventy percent of their maximum oxygen uptake [MI]. At that intensity, most people can no longer carry on a conversation.

Yet another time, the researchers omitted the warm-up altogether and the men immediately started doing leg presses [Control].

Results
The figure below shows that after the long warm-up with low intensity, the students were at their strongest [LDLI]. They were then 3 percent stronger than after the Control session.

After the long warm-up with a moderate intensity [LDMI], the students were actually less strong. This was probably because this warm up tired them out.

Conclusion
On paper, a three percent increase in maximum strength through an optimal warm-up may not seem like much. That is a misconception, write the Brazilians. "In well trained subjects, this difference might mean the result of weeks of heavy strength training."

Source:
J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Apr;27(4):1009-13.

More:
Is strength training taxing your joints? Warming up with a foam roller might be of help 08.06.2013

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