Warm-up programmes in sport

Injuries sustained by participants in team sports place a considerable burden on medical services,1 2 and they often disrupt the lives of those injured. Evidence based strategies to prevent injury should therefore be encouraged. Sports teams often perform a warm-up routine with the dual purpose of improving performance and reducing the risk of injury. Although the theory that warming up effectively will reduce the risk of injury makes sense, data from the sports medicine literature are equivocal, and this theory has rarely been proved through randomised control trials.3

In the linked study (doi:10.1136/bmj.a2469), Soligard and colleagues report a cluster randomised controlled trial of an injury prevention programme in young female football players in Norway.4 A 20 minute warm-up intervention was conducted before training sessions and matches. The warm-up routine consisted of a series …