A good way of getting people’s attention is by writing a headline that flatly contradicts a commonly held belief. You may have noticed that once in a while an article makes the rounds when it suggests something you’ve been doing for years is a waste of time, or perhaps even actively harmful. One of the latest attention grabbers is “the myth of the warm-up”. According to some reports based on recent sports science research, warming up before exercise may be a waste of time.

Think of all that valuable warm-up time we’ve spent over the years, in the belief that it’s really important - does that mean we could have spent it chatting to the fit guy/girl on the rowing machine, or posting another gym selfie instead? Not so fast.

The difficulty with statements like “warm-ups don’t work” is that they raise more questions than they answers. Before we can decide whether it’s true or not, we need to clearly define our terms. What do we mean by “warm-up,” and what do we mean by “work”?

What’s the point?

Let’s look at the second part first. When we warm up before exercise, what are we trying to achieve? Unless we have a clear idea what our objective is, it’s going to be hard to determine whether what we’re doing is effective.

The main reasons people give for warming up before exercise fall into three main categories:

1. Prevention of injury
2. Improved performance.
3. Decreased discomfort or improved recovery after exercise.

Much of the evidence about warm-ups focuses on the first category - whether or not warm ups prevent injury. As you can see, that’s not the whole picture, but the research is patchy, and the various studies look at different outcome measures. If that doesn’t make it complicated enough, things are about to get worse.

What’s in a warm-up?

There’s no universal definition of what a warm up should look like. Naturally, it’ll differ for people doing different activities: your warm-up before a marathon probably won’t look much like an MMA fighter’s pre-fight preparation. It seems quite likely that, given the radically different demands of different sports, the ideal warm-up strategies for each will be different. A routine that has significant benefits for one activity may be counterproductive for another. This makes it hard to generalize from evidence that focuses only on one specific activity: a study on 17-year-old female football players from Sweden may not be relevant to you if you’re a 46-year-old triathlete from Indiana. Although a marathon runner might find that warming up makes little difference to his time or how she feels the next day, if you were to suggest to an Olympic weightlifter that she puts her one rep max snatch weight over her head without a warm-up, she’ll probably think you’re crazy (and possibly homicidal).

Even within a single sport, there are often many different ideas about the best way to start a workout. They range from a bit of gentle jogging on the spot and a few stretches, to mobility circuits and muscle activation exercises. There’s no reason to think that two very different warm-up routines will have the same effect, so any time you read anything about the effectiveness of warm-ups, you should automatically look to see which specific kind of warm-up it’s talking about.

What does the evidence say?

Let’s put all this together and look at some research. One of the components of the warm-up that’s taken a particular trouncing in the literature recently is static stretching. This used to be commonplace - many athletes would begin their match preparation by doing a few stretches - but has fallen out of fashion as evidence against it has begun to accumulate. Not only does it not appear to reduce injury risk, but it also seems to have little effect on muscle soreness, and it may even harm performance for some athletes.
Although static stretching before a workout doesn’t appear to have the benefits we once thought, other warm-up strategies have proven more promising, especially when looking at specific routines that are relevant to the activity taking place.

Individual differences matter

Another possibility that the research doesn’t take into account is that individuals may benefit from different warm-up activities. That’s certainly the anecdotal experience of many athletes who have developed their own preferred pre-event routines that suit their personal strengths and weaknesses. An athlete suffering from a prior shoulder injury may find that she needs to do a different set of exercises compared to her teammate who had a knee surgery last year, for example. Other athletes report being “slow starters” and perceive the need for a longer warm up than many of their peers. And although it doesn’t appear to have much overall benefit, static stretching may have a place for some individuals.

What don’t we know?

With so many variables to take into account, it’s hardly surprising that we’re short of high quality evidence. Many of the original studies have a relatively small number of participants, and only focus on a small piece of the picture. Any article that draws firm conclusions from limited research should always ring alarm bells, and that’s very much the case on this topic.

While it’s useful to stay up to date with the research, and to use it as a guide, there simply isn’t enough of it to answer all our questions. If we took everything out of our training that we can’t provide rigorous scientific justification for, we’d barely make it off the couch. That’s not a reason to ignore the research that does exist, but it is a reason to read it carefully before integrating it with your own individual experience and the professional opinion of coaches who you respect.

The verdict: probably false, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the ideal way to warm up for different activities. Static stretching is unlikely to provide much benefit; and more dynamic, activity specific routines seem to work better. You should experiment with different approaches to find out what works best for you.