The idea that you have to warm up before playing sports is very widespread. In fact, it is not uncommon to see people perform movements of a very diverse nature before running, playing a game of paddle tennis or doing a strength session in the gym. The legendary player Maradona remains in memory, who during the warm-up before a UEFA Cup semi-final with Naples, gave a lesson in movements, actions and skills that would allow him to be prepared for the start of the match.
The meaning of warming comes from Latin to heat (warm up), which was first adopted with the action of increasing the body temperature of the organism. I used to have a standard protocol with very generic guidance that didn’t have to be related to the training session I was facing. However, currently, the concept is much broader to accommodate an objective more related to activating or enhancing, better preparing the body for the demands it will face in a training session or competition. Starting from this premise, the warm-up must be well thought out in terms of volume, intensity, type or orientation of the tasks or exercises performed. Furthermore, if the duration of the warm-up is extensive, as usually happens when the athlete’s level increases (it can last up to 45 minutes), and that is a training load that must be quantified, since it may be part of the adaptations that occur in the long term.
Warming has been widely studied in the scientific literature, where systematic reviews have recently been published that contribute to the knowledge of this section. One of the first questions is to know what type of warm-up to perform. In this sense, there is the playful warm-up, where unstructured situations are proposed, which may or may not be related to the activity that will be carried out later. For example, playing soccer tennis on a tennis court, where you will later train tennis. It may have content similar to sport and be done on the same court, but the fundamental objective is for it to be fun, the training load is not controlled. The generic warm-up, which are general protocols, that are not specific to the movement patterns or skills or abilities that will later be developed in the training session. For example, do continuous running at a very low intensity and then play basketball.
There is also the specific warm-up for the training session or sport in question. This block includes warm-ups planned and structured by a professional in the field, where patterns or qualities are developed that will later appear in the training session. For example, functional strength warm-up for a subsequent strength session or, soccer-specific warm-up, to later play soccer. At the same time, it is interesting to highlight how within these examples, the concept of specificity is not only aimed at whether the session is about strength or football, but also about the contents to be developed in the main part of the session in question. Thus, warming up in tennis for the development of changes of direction (accelerations and decelerations) and groundstrokes will not be the same as for the development of tactical actions such as serve and volley. From here, combinations can be made, so that a functional warm-up for strength may be less specific if what is subsequently going to be developed is a padel training session, but at the same time, it will be more specific if the The content of the paddle tennis session is the development of strength on the court. For this reason, it is so important that a warm-up is designed by a professional in the field.
Another relevant aspect is not only the content of the warm-up, but also the duration and intensity. It returns to the premise that a good warm-up must be designed by a professional who knows the individual characteristics of the person and where they are in their planning. A warm-up that is very intense or lasts too long can generate fatigue that manifests itself at the beginning of the main part or even at the end of it, losing the possibility of assimilation and subsequent adaptation. The warm-up is a balancing act, if it is scarce, due to content, duration or intensity, it will not allow subsequent development that achieves the objectives; and if it is too extensive (due to the same factors) the same thing will happen; in one case, by excess and in another, by defect. Don’t forget that the training session begins when you lace up your shoes.