When Warming Up for Exercise, Less May Be More

From the NY Times…

June 15, 2011, 12:01 am

When Warming Up for Exercise, Less May Be More

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Few aspects of sports are as wrapped in myth as the warm-up. Most of us dutifully warm up in some way before we work out or compete, but according to a new study, “little is known about how an athlete should warm up.” In fact, as that study and other recent research make clear, the more scientists study warm-ups, the less they seem to understand about the practice.

The new study found, for instance, that some athletes warm up so thoroughly that they are too tired to perform well afterward. In the study, which was published last month in The Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers at the University of Calgary in Alberta asked track cyclists to complete, on alternate days, their usual warm-up or a shorter, easier version. Cyclists, especially those who sprint around a circular velodrome, are well known (even notorious) for the length and intricacy of their warm-ups.

In this case, the volunteers, highly trained male racers, first followed their standard warm-up routine, beginning with 20 minutes of riding. The intensity of the pedaling increased until it reached about 95 percent of each rider’s maximal heart rate. That session was followed immediately by four hard intervals, or timed sprints, during which the rider would pedal as hard as he could for eight minutes.

“We suspected that that warm-up was harder than it should be,” said Brian R. MacIntosh, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Calgary and an author of the study, along with Elias K. Tomaras, a graduate student.

Read on here.