An international team of sports scientists and elite coaches has released a comprehensive new consensus outlining the science, purpose, and execution of the athletic warm-up. Published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, the document features 72 distinct statements that were thoroughly debated, negotiated, and ultimately approved by a panel of 23 experts hailing from 12 countries.
Led by Spanish physiologist Daniel Boullosa alongside scientific colleagues from 11 other nations—many of whom possess firsthand experience competing or coaching at the highest levels of athletics—the project provides a unified framework for what athletes and trainers should be doing before stepping onto the field, track, or court. Each of the 72 statements required the backing of at least 19 of the 23 experts to make the final cut, establishing a rigorous benchmark for the current state of expert consensus regarding pre-exercise routines.
What Is a Warm-Up?
Among the findings, one of the few entirely unanimous statements on the list establishes a baseline definition for the practice: a protocol utilized by athletes prior to training sessions and competitions to prepare themselves for subsequent physical activities.
On the surface, the logic appears straightforward. Athletes warm up to enhance their immediate performance and mitigate the risk of injury while undertaking strenuous work. However, the expert panel highlights several underlying nuances. Certain components of a warm-up may serve long-term developmental goals, such as learning new technical skills, refining movement patterns, building foundational strength, or expanding range of motion. When athletes incorporate complex plyometric drills prior to a primary workout session, the distinction between warming up and actual training begins to blur. Furthermore, a warm-up routine can function as a practical screening tool to evaluate whether an athlete is physically prepared for a high-intensity session or requires additional rest.
Consequently, a recurring theme across the 72 statements is that context dictates design. A warm-up preceding a routine training session may integrate a wide array of elements focused on long-term athletic development, whereas a warm-up right before a race is almost exclusively dedicated to maximizing acute speed and physiological readiness.
How Does a Warm-Up Boost Performance?
According to the consensus, the primary performance-related goals of any warm-up are threefold: elevating core body temperature, stimulating metabolic pathways, and enhancing overall physiological and psychological readiness.
Warming the body remains a central objective. Warmer muscle tissue is inherently more supple and flexible. Furthermore, elevated temperatures accelerate the transmission of neural signals and speed up metabolic reactions, allowing athletes to supply energy to their working muscles more efficiently right from the start of an event.
However, research cited by the panel indicates that thermal increases alone do not tell the whole story. A notable 2011 study compared the performance-boosting potential of 20 minutes of easy cycling against 20 minutes of passive immersion in a warm bath. Although the thermal elevation was equivalent in both scenarios, the passive bath failed to produce the same performance gains. The active warm-up provided additional physiological benefits, such as elevating heart rate and breathing frequency to prepare the cardiovascular and respiratory systems for the demands of exercise.
Enhancing "readiness" encompasses both physiological adjustments and psychological preparation. While elevated body temperature and metabolism handle the physical side, an athlete’s mental state heavily influences their perception of readiness just moments before a competition starts. Previous research into mental warm-ups and placebo effects has demonstrated that psychological priming—such as simply believing a routine will improve performance—can yield measurable competitive benefits.
Will Warming Up Reduce My Risk of Injury?
Perhaps counterintuitively, the international panel did not reach a consensus supporting the widely held belief that a standard warm-up directly reduces the risk of acute injury during the subsequent workout or race. Despite this being the most common justification internalized by generations of athletes, the scientific data linking immediate warm-ups to acute injury prevention remains inconclusive.
Regarding chronic effects, however, the panel narrowly cleared the threshold for a long-term preventive stance. By a 19-vote margin, the experts agreed that it is possible to chronically reduce the risk of injuries when incorporating targeted preventive exercises—such as strength and balance training—into a warm-up protocol. Notably, an almost identical statement received unanimous approval: that it is equally possible to achieve these long-term injury-reduction benefits by including those same preventive exercises anywhere within the broader training session, rather than strictly confining them to the warm-up window.
What Are the Ingredients of a Warm-Up?
The consensus divides a comprehensive warm-up into three key components: a general phase, a specific phase, and conditioning activities.
The general phase is typically continuous, aerobic, and performed at a submaximal intensity. Its purpose is to be long and intense enough to elevate core body temperature and kickstart metabolic function. For distance runners, this often takes the form of a straightforward 10- to 15-minute jog.
The specific phase targets the physical, technical, and tactical demands of the upcoming activity, moving muscles through or slightly beyond their expected range of motion. Soccer players might execute passing and dribbling drills, while runners transition into dynamic movements such as high knees, leg swings, walking lunges, and skips.
The conditioning phase bridges the gap between the warm-up and the primary workout or competition. Strength and power athletes frequently utilize near-maximal lifts or contractions to trigger post-activation potentiation, a temporary enhancement of nervous system activation. Endurance athletes often incorporate a series of fast sprints or sustained hard efforts lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes. These harder efforts are designed to improve oxygen kinetics, accelerating how quickly the body ramps up oxygen delivery to the muscles when exercise intensity spikes.
How Do You Timing It Right?
Determining the ideal duration and timing of a warm-up presents a persistent scheduling challenge. The panel defines a "short" warm-up as lasting less than five minutes, while a "long" warm-up—frequently favored by competitive athletes—extends beyond 20 minutes.
Contextual variables play a massive role here. While well-trained athletes can leverage a longer warm-up for an optimal performance boost, novice athletes risk accumulating excess fatigue that can wipe out any physiological advantages. Balancing bodily priming against premature exhaustion remains the fundamental tension of warm-up design.
For events like marathons, where carbohydrate fuel stores are finite and the initial racing pace is relatively measured, a brief five-minute jog is generally sufficient. In hot weather, shorter warm-ups are similarly favored to prevent premature overheating. Conversely, competing in cold environments may require a longer or more intense warm-up to successfully elevate core temperature, alongside minimized downtime between the end of the warm-up and the starting gun to prevent the body from cooling down. Athletes in cold conditions often rely on passive heating methods, such as wearing extra layers of sweatpants or utilizing battery-powered heated garments, to maintain their thermal status while waiting to compete.
What About Stretching?
When addressing the perennial debate over flexibility work, the 23-expert panel achieved broad agreement: dynamic stretching exercises are generally preferred over static stretching exercises during pre-competition routines. High knees and leg swings are encouraged, while prolonged periods of sitting on the ground to target static flexibility are discouraged immediately prior to performance.
Exceptions exist for disciplines that explicitly demand extreme ranges of motion, such as gymnastics or ice hockey goaltending, where static stretching remains valuable whether performed during the warm-up or at an entirely separate time.
While older research indicated that prolonged static stretching can temporarily reduce muscular strength and running efficiency—largely explaining its decline in pre-run routines—the consensus notes that these transient effects can be fully reversed by concluding the warm-up with dynamic movements. Ultimately, while athletes who enjoy static stretching may safely continue the practice, the scientific literature demonstrates no strict requirement for it, and recent meta-analyses have found no definitive link between pre-exercise stretching and overall injury rates.
