The role of warmup in muscular injury prevention

This study is an attempt to provide biomechanical sup port for the athletic practice of warming up prior to an exercise task to reduce the incidence of injury. Tears in isometrically preconditioned (stimulated before stretching) muscle were compared to tears in control (nonstimulated) muscle by examining four parameters: 1) force and 2) change of length required to tear the muscle, 3) site of failure, and 4) length-tension defor mation. The tibialis anterior (TA), the extensor digitorum longus (EDL), and flexor digitorum longus (EDL) mus cles from both hindlimbs of rabbits comprised our ex perimental model. Isometrically preconditioned TA (P < 0.001), EDL (P < 0.005), and FDL (P < 0.01) muscles required more force to fail than their contralateral controls. Precondi tioned TA (P < 0.05), EDL (P < 0.001), and FDL (P < 0.01) muscles also stretched to a greater length from rest before failing than their nonpreconditioned con trols. The site of failure in all of the muscles was the musculotendinous junction; thus, the site of failure was not altered by condition. The length-tension deforma tion curves for all three muscle types showed that in every case the preconditioned muscles attained a lesser force at each given increase in length before failure, showing a relative increase in elasticity, although only the EDL showed a statistically significant differ ence. From our data, it may be inferred that physiologic warming (isometric preconditioning) is of benefit in pre venting muscular injury by increasing the and length to failure and elasticity of the muscle-tendon unit.