How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

The worst advice ever! Absolutely! I am totally insane! Jazz Hands, I disagree. You are actually quite right. Psychological arousal causes increased blood flow to skeletal muscle and generally prepares the body for maximal physical performance. This is an evolutionary adaptation for extreme situations where survival depends on the ability to be very strong and fast for a short period of time. Here's a paper about it: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../6816891

I'm thankful no swimming coach that I've ever heard of is claiming pre race jitters substitute for actual warm-up, based on an article abstract from 1982. But, hey, whatever works for you. You keep on Googling!! You can get the full version of that one for free. Really this idea goes way way way back before 1982. I'm not sure why you think it's irrelevant because it's old. There's no new research refuting the idea that arousal causes increased blood flow to the muscles, so why does it matter how long ago people figured it out? Should we stop using the Pythagorean theorem as well?

Also, geek, do you still think scientific articles are less credible if they are found through Google Scholar as opposed to one of the more clunky article search engines? I remember our last argument about Google Scholar, which was simply astounding to me. You could not figure out, through any amount repetition or variations on the theme, that Google Scholar leads to the exact same articles as any other database or search engine that covers scholarly journals. The research is not less real, the person finding the research is not more dumb, really nothing is different at all. I can find articles at the library by using the indexing system, or by going to the section where I know the relevant journals are and just browsing. Either way, I end up at useful information. So you probably need to stop using "Google" pejoratively with respect to finding journal articles :) I'm not really sure how else to back up a point with scientific research besides searching for articles. I know that research exists to support specific ideas, because I've read the research before. How do you propose I find it again?

Here's more information about Google Scholar, geek. I'm determined to help you in your journey to figuring out exactly what it is. www.google.com/.../0612_01.html I have a simple goal -- or, rather, a simple-to-state goal. I would like Google Scholar to be a place that you can go to find all scholarly literature -- across all areas, all languages, all the way back in time. Of course, this is easy to say and not quite as easy to achieve. I believe it is crucial for researchers everywhere to be able to find research done anywhere. As Vannevar Bush said in his prescient essay "As We May Think" (The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945), "Mendel's concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential."

OK, Jazzweed, I give in. I just Googled "ridiculous warm-up advice that is guaranteed to get someone injured" and your name popped right up! Heck yeah, man, this Googling is the the bomb! Thanks for the tip. Umm... this is kind of surreal now. Can you re-read some of what I wrote, please?

What's interesting for me is that why would every coach I've ever had (as a masters or USS) insist on some kind of warm up prior to racing. . . Coaches do a lot of things because that is the way everyone else does it. And it isn't limited to coaches. So what kind of warm up in needed to prepare the heart for the shock of racing?

Jazz Hands, I agree with your statements with increased blood flow, fight or flight response type statements. Do you have anything that comments on what causes hearts to go through catastrophic failure under extreme stress, and how it could be prevented?

Jazz Hands, I agree with your statements with increased blood flow, fight or flight response type statements. Do you have anything that comments on what causes hearts to go through catastrophic failure under extreme stress, and how it could be prevented? No, I don't. We really shouldn't be giving each other medical advice here. I will point out that people are extremely freaking paranoid about heart attacks at this forum, to the point where a lot of people think that I am going to have a heart attack because of how I train, at 23 years old, having absolutely no reason to suspect that I have poor heart health at all.

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.

I will also say this topic was blogged on our USMS team website by two very accomplished coaches, USMS and USA Swimming. Both clearly stated warmup was necessary, but varied by individual. Neither suggested pre-race jitters as a suitable alternative for warming up. You may have noticed that I seriously do not care what experts tell me to do.