‘Don’t ignore those warm-ups — they can save you from running injuries’

Inexperienced runners are considered to be at greater risk of running-related injuries due to their lack of skills in assessing training intensity and errors. 

A new study suggests that investing time in simple exercise techniques, such as a warm-up routine, adjusting exercise volume and responding to body signals, may stifle the risk of injuries.

Using a new online intervention “Runfitcheck” developed to stimulate injury-preventive behaviour among novice runners, researchers from the University of Pretoria and Dutch researchers found those in the online intervention group had searched more often for information about the warm-up routine and strength exercise.

This behaviour has been associated with fewer injuries compared with those who performed their running activities as usual. History of a previous injury in the past 12 months was also found to be the main risk factor for running injuries.

After five months of enrolments, participants in the 2017 study reported what they had done regarding injury-preventive behaviour using a personalised training schedule. Not only did the intervention group engage more often in warm-up routines before running, they also added strength exercises to their warm-up routine. The intervention group also performed more running technique exercises compared to the control group.

About 56% in the intervention group had searched for warm-up routines versus 45% in the control group, and 49% had added more strength exercises compared to 38% in the control group. About 59% performed strength exercises compared with 52% who did not use Runfitcheck.

“The online intervention Runfitcheck was effective in stimulating aspects of injury-preventive behaviour in adult novice runners, mostly related to a warm-up routine,” wrote researchers in the SA Journal of Sports Medicine. The latest findings are in line with existing research that showed online tailored injury-preventive advice led to a reduction in running injuries.

Almost one-third of the participants had less than one year of running experience. In the three months before the study, 14% of the participants had run less than once per week while 21% had run once per week on average. At least 66% had run at least twice per week.

At baseline about 81% of the intervention group reported they performed some kind of warm-up routine at the start of their training session, with 19% having performed an extensive warm-up routine in which they started to run at a slow pace and performed strength and sport-specific exercises. In the control group, 80% performed some kind of warm-up routine, while 20% performed an extensive warm-up routine.

Writing in the African Journal of Sports Medicine, lead researcher Ellen Kemler said in the current study researchers did not know the quality of the warm-up routine the runners performed.

“We do know around 80% of the runners in the intervention group added strength exercises to this routine, as did 75% of the runners in the control group.”

While researchers hypothesised that using the Runfitcheck intervention would ultimately lead to a decrease in running injuries, Kemler said the focus was on “stimulating injury-preventive behaviour rather than preventing running-related injuries”.

For future studies researchers said it is important to define what a warm-up routine should be or put more effort into determining the quality of a warm-up routine.

“We demonstrated effects of the Runfitcheck intervention in stimulating some aspects of injury-preventive behaviour, indicating such intervention could work in the real world. In our intervention we tried to focus on the physical load-taking capacity of runners and the motivation to achieve their running goals. Performing a warm-up routine was one of our suggestions. Though we did stimulate injury-preventive behaviour, this might not be enough to prevent running-related injuries,” said Kemler.

TimesLIVE