Warm-up is key before any athletic or exercise event, and timing is of the utmost importance to every athlete, coach, trainer, and team who competes in these types of events on a professional level. Benefits of the warm-up include increase of body temperature, enhanced metabolic reactions, faster contraction and relaxation of both agonist and antagonist muscles. In this particular study, the researchers tested 10 people both men and women varying from ages 22 to 43 years old, five of who are professional rowers and five of who are professional runners. Following the 15 minute standardized warm-up, the athletes were place in both a temperate environment of 24 ⋅C and a cold temperature of 5⋅C consisting of both 5 and a 30 minute rest. The temperate environment of 24 ⋅C and post warm-up rest 5 minutes served as the control for the experiment. The researchers were looking to find two things: to find out if delaying after the warm-up effects the timed trial performance and they wanted to find out if the athlete’s exposure to a cold environment had an “additive” type effect to their performance. In addition to their findings, the researchers also wanted to be able to provide some type of practical guide to help with the individual’s preparation before competition just in case delays were to occur due to either logistics, weather, or both- if the event was to occur in cold temperature. After each resting period, the athletes performed an all out max effort on each of their 4 trials. The runners performed a 2.4 km on a treadmill, and rowers performed 2km on a rowing ergometer. The researchers measured heart rate, lactate, and esophageal and skin temperature during all times of the entire study. They found that the athlete’s performance had a significant 4% decrease in their timed trials (around a 20 second decrease in time) in with colder temperature and longer post-rest period, which proves to be detrimental to any athletes who depend on timing for their performance. Lastly, their research found that when an athlete is in a cold environment for a long period of time post warm-up, the integration of increased heat loss from the body coupled with long rest periods between warm-up event in a cold environment lessens the actual benefit of the warm-up itself.
Reference
Spitz M, Kenefick R, Mitchell J. The Effects of Elapsed Time After Warm-Up on Subsequent Exercise Performance in a Cold Environment. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2014;28(5):1351-1357.
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