How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Ok, I've decided to summarize what I'm talking about, since it's obviously a fun sport to twist what I'm saying and ridicule me. First, I can't believe I have to do this, but I'm going to talk about Google Scholar and how it is a credible source of information. There are a lot of databases of scholarly articles. That usually means things that have appeared in peer-reviewed journals. A search engine for these articles will index many journals and return articles when you enter a search query. The Google corporation has a relatively new one of these, called Google Scholar. It's important to note, and this is what aquageek has been (purposely?) missing, Google Scholar is not the same thing as the main Google search engine. It's based on a completely different database of results, and its purpose is completely different. It is much more similar to the article databases in that it only returns scholarly research. Usually, if I want to find articles on some subject, the easiest thing to do is search for the subject area in Google Scholar. From there I can use the "cited by" and "related articles" features to find more, as well as the actual citations in the articles themselves. This is just how I like to find articles. Other people do it with other search engines. The important thing to realize is that if you are going to find research to support a claim, you are going to have to search for it somewhere. Google Scholar is only one of the methods to search. Now, on to what we're actually talking about. 1. The purpose of warm-up before a race is to prepare the body for maximal performance. What I mean by this is that there are certain states in which we are more likely to produce greater force, with greater coordination, and anything else that leads to a faster time. Warm up is a very good way to achieve this. Blood gets moving to the muscles, joints get lubricated, and heart rate increases. There are also psychological effects, in some cases. I know a lot of people warm up just to feel as if they are ready to race. Also, being prepared for maximal performance means being prepared in a safe way. I think safety and performance overlap a lot here. We can reasonably assume that the body should have mechanisms which prevent injuries when going through physical exertion. This would be adaptive, from an evolutionary perspective. 2. It is adaptive to be prepared for maximal performance when psychologically aroused. This is essentially what that article is about, along with the specific physiological responses. Basically, psychological arousal is an indicator to the body from the mind that there may need to be an extreme physical exertion. This is very likely to have been naturally selected, because animals without this connection would be less effective at escaping predators, catching prey, or winning a fight, due to inadequate preparation. Safety and injury prevention also come into play here. Suppose such a system exists to prepare the animal for exertion, but it exists without proper safeguarding against injury. This gives the animal a lower likelihood of survival, because it will be able to produce top force and speed, but then get injured in the course of it. So there's probably also an evolutionary pressure for the safety of an arousal-based physical burst. 3. Therefore, it is possible to warm up without moving. At least to some extent it is. I'm not claiming this is absolute, or everyone has to do it this way. Just that it's a reasonable idea. It has worked great for me personally. Others, such as CreamPuff, have anecdotes about trying to race without warming up and being unsatisfied with the result.

Ok, I've decided to summarize what I'm talking about, since it's obviously a fun sport to twist what I'm saying and ridicule me. First, I can't believe I have to do this, but I'm going to talk about Google Scholar and how it is a credible source of information. There are a lot of databases of scholarly articles. That usually means things that have appeared in peer-reviewed journals. A search engine for these articles will index many journals and return articles when you enter a search query. The Google corporation has a relatively new one of these, called Google Scholar. It's important to note, and this is what aquageek has been (purposely?) missing, Google Scholar is not the same thing as the main Google search engine. It's based on a completely different database of results, and its purpose is completely different. It is much more similar to the article databases in that it only returns scholarly research. Usually, if I want to find articles on some subject, the easiest thing to do is search for the subject area in Google Scholar. From there I can use the "cited by" and "related articles" features to find more, as well as the actual citations in the articles themselves. This is just how I like to find articles. Other people do it with other search engines. The important thing to realize is that if you are going to find research to support a claim, you are going to have to search for it somewhere. Google Scholar is only one of the methods to search. Now, on to what we're actually talking about. 1. The purpose of warm-up before a race is to prepare the body for maximal performance. What I mean by this is that there are certain states in which we are more likely to produce greater force, with greater coordination, and anything else that leads to a faster time. Warm up is a very good way to achieve this. Blood gets moving to the muscles, joints get lubricated, and heart rate increases. There are also psychological effects, in some cases. I know a lot of people warm up just to feel as if they are ready to race. Also, being prepared for maximal performance means being prepared in a safe way. I think safety and performance overlap a lot here. We can reasonably assume that the body should have mechanisms which prevent injuries when going through physical exertion. This would be adaptive, from an evolutionary perspective. 2. It is adaptive to be prepared for maximal performance when psychologically aroused. This is essentially what that article is about, along with the specific physiological responses. Basically, psychological arousal is an indicator to the body from the mind that there may need to be an extreme physical exertion. This is very likely to have been naturally selected, because animals without this connection would be less effective at escaping predators, catching prey, or winning a fight, due to inadequate preparation. Safety and injury prevention also come into play here. Suppose such a system exists to prepare the animal for exertion, but it exists without proper safeguarding against injury. This gives the animal a lower likelihood of survival, because it will be able to produce top force and speed, but then get injured in the course of it. So there's probably also an evolutionary pressure for the safety of an arousal-based physical burst. 3. Therefore, it is possible to warm up without moving. At least to some extent it is. I'm not claiming this is absolute, or everyone has to do it this way. Just that it's a reasonable idea. It has worked great for me personally. Others, such as CreamPuff, have anecdotes about trying to race without warming up and being unsatisfied with the result.