How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

arousal causes increased blood flow to skeletal muscle and generally prepares the body for maximal physical performance. You boys have all the fun.

All I know is that no warm up with stretching means severely pulled hamstring on one occasion and strained long head of biceps on another while playing Ultimate Frisbee. Warm up with a decent amount of stretching means no muscular injuries in 10 years of playing. The two don't necessarily have to be correlated, but they seem to go hand in hand to me. Perhaps I just haven't been able to work myself up sufficiently. I also know that in running races, on the occasions I haven't warmed up properly, my legs felt sluggish and my performances suffered. I'm not discounting what Jazz has to say, but in my experience, it has not worked for me. Oh yeah, the results of swimming those cold 500 frees... Our times were slower than what we could repeat in practice during the season. I'm not disputing Jazz's findings either because he seems to be a sprinter, and I know that I'm not one, so it's natural that our race prep is different.

Then stop trying to convince us your Googly Scholar posts are expert opinions. Meh, yawn. I'm not an expert, I just have rational arguments. Which is one better than you.

I usually swim a 600 free, 400 IM, 8-50's and some sprints off the blocks for warm ups at a meet. When I'm doing this warm-up, it feels like it's draining all of energy. But it actually helps you during the meet. Don't be afraid of long warm ups at a meet!

You mean such as muttering to yourself like a feral child before races is adequate warm-up. Is this tone necessary? You aren't directly responding to my argument. You're just laughing at your own cartoonish version of it. What's the point? Please, if you want to tell me I'm wrong, do it with some rhetorical device other than condescending ridicule. You told me that you're actually nice, so I don't get why you're being extremely rude about this.

I don't warm up at meets, but if you want to do that much, go for it. Just as I suspected. Let me grab a cup of coffee and await the hecklers and critics. :anim_coffee: There is nothing wrong with no warmup. For sprinters like the Jazzmaster, it is easy to do. The last two summers, I ran 3 long course meets (2 of them with ~200 people) and swam some pretty good long course times in several events with zero warmup. However, I don't recommend trying it for anything 200 and up - I had some good swims in those events in there, but wow, did they hurt! Also, for those of you who actually need to warm up, we have a teammate that will warm up about 500, then walk up and down the deck between hot showers. Up on the blocks, and BAM team records drop just like that. Hot shower warmup/warmdown is great for small pools with little or no warmup/warmdown space.

What is a good warmup for 'fly? I'm doing my first pool meet ever in three weeks, and for some unfathomable reason (temporary insanity?) have put my name down for 50m butterfly.

No, I don't. We really shouldn't be giving each other medical advice here. LOL, so true. I don't want medical advice and medical advice would tell me if I should race at all or not. I want to know how to safely elevate my heart rate before a race. I will look around and see if I can find some research on the topic, but I don't think the answer is medical advice. Maybe there is something nice in Google Scholar or Swimming Fastest. As for warm up in general, if it is such an individualized thing, is Jazz Hands walking to the blocks enough to warm him up? I have heard that "people" are not warming up enough. What is enough? I have heard that sprinters need even more of a warm up. How much is that? Thanks Shamboola for asking the question and everyone who posted what they were doing and how prepared it made them feel.

It's not like I called you an arrogant jerk or anything. Your assertions are not supported in the swimming community or sporting community. I believe what you have stated, if followed by most athletes is a one way ticket to injury. I know what you believe, the problem is that you haven't stated why you believe that. Part of it comes from the fact that experts say so. That has some weight, but I choose to challenge experts, on the premise that experts have been wrong before, so they can be wrong now. The only way to determine which statements by experts are actually correct, sans the benefit of hindsight, is to examine each issue in more depth. That's what I've attempted to do with the necessity of warm-up. If you want to refute what I've said, I'm glad to hear it.

Since I would simply regurgitate what every coach I've ever had says, what every current coach says, what every college athlete I swim with says, what every former D1 swimmer I swim with says it would not be of value to you. Their experience, coupled with my limited knowledge, is sufficient for me. I should be clear that while I find your methods to be unorthodox and unsustainable, they are yours and fine by me. When you reach out on topics completely refuted by most swimmers and coaches and your sole methods of refutation are "I question authority" and "mistakes are made," I'm gonna call you on it. I put the completely false part in bold. The ability of experts to be wrong is merely the basis for me to begin to question an assertion. As for the actual content of my refutation, I wrote a detailed argument based on known facts about the physical effects of psychological arousal and how they are potentially very similar to the physical effects of warm up. Did you miss that?