A tougher warm-up brings more benefit

Warming up has long been practised by athletes before exercise to protect against muscle strains and tears. We pretty much blindly accept that rituals around flexibility and balance must be doing some good.

But what’s the evidence? There’s precious little research about the best way to warm up. Do those contortions we see Premier League players doing before a match really work?

Scientists from the University of Copenhagen and other institutions decided to examine the effects of some of the world’s best-known warm-up programmes, the FIFA 11 and its recent update, the FIFA 11+.

Designed by sports scientists affiliated with world football’s governing body, the original FIFA 11 warm-up is light and quick, lasting about 10 minutes and involving various kinds of jumping, shuffling and balancing exercises.

The updated FIFA 11+ is more intense, requiring repeated sprints and exercises such as squats, leg lifts and vertical leaps.

While many experiments have tested whether these warm-ups keep athletes healthy, most have been small and their results inconclusive.

But the new study pooled data from the best earlier studies, those that randomly assigned athletes to warm up either with a FIFA programme or some other routine (usually stretching and jogging) and then tracked injury rates for at least a season.

By combining the results the researchers got information about almost 4,000 male and female amateur footballers, ranging in age from adolescents to middle-aged adults.

And the outcomes were striking. Those boys, girls, men and women who regularly completed the FIFA 11+ warm-up before training or games were about 40% less likely to sustain knee, ankle, hamstring and hip or groin injuries during a season than athletes who warmed up in other ways.

Interestingly, the easier FIFA 11 warm-up did not substantially reduce the incidence of subsequent injuries.

“The FIFA 11+ presumably reduces injuries by improving muscle strength, balance and coordination,” while the older version and most other warm-up routines do not, says Kristian Thorborg, a professor of sports and musculoskeletal physiotherapy at the University of Copenhagen.

He added the FIFA 11+ warm-up is likely to be effective at reducing injuries not only among footballers but also those playing basketball and other sports “that include sprinting, cutting and rapid changes in acceleration.”

But it’s an energetic and intricate programme that should be begun slowly at the start of a sports season, he says. The FIFA 11+ website details three levels of the warm-up, so athletes can progressively ramp up its intensity.

They were 40% less likely to suffer injuries