WOODBURY — Warm-ups: an athlete’s 10 minutes to gossip with their teammates.
But does it still count as a warm up when I’m stretching my neck to hear better?
I goof around and don’t take every warm-up exercise seriously, but what I didn’t know was how easily I could’ve gotten injured.
I bet you didn’t realize that one of the leading causes for an athlete’s injury is improper warm-up.
“Some injuries happen because of a lack of warm-up,” says Nonnewaug athletic trainer Sean McGee. “I would say more than 50% of my injuries that I get here at Nonnewaug are due to improper warm-up.”
These injuries can be anything: “Pulled hamstring, pulled groin, pulled hip flexor, just pulled muscles in general,” says McGee.
I know these injuries like the back of my hand — I’ve had my fair share of pulled muscles after a lazy warm-up.
Student-athletes, myself included, need to be properly stretched and ready before our activities if we want to prevent injuries.
I should practice what I preach, though.
“You’ll see people that don’t warm up properly and they go on a play and, A, they get hurt, B, it takes them 15 minutes to really get to be fully warm,” says McGee. “So warming up, it’s extremely important.”
These warm-ups can be anything from knee hugs to lunges, but they are all necessary no matter what activity you are doing.
Local owner of M-FIT Gym, right here in Woodbury, Marissa Daddona, begins every class with a dynamic warm-up.
“Depending on the activity, we foam roll and do resistance band work,” says Daddona. “But also I add core exercises into my warm-up to get the blood flow from head to toe. depending on the circuit or training we add tempo squats and banded walks for the hips.”
These warm-up exercises have helped me prevent injuries in and out of the gym. Some of these I’ve even brought to my own sports teams to make sure we’re really warming up, because I’ve seen teammates pull muscles and end up missing half of their season.
“Something I always keep in mind,” junior Maia Colavito said,” is that Sean always tells us that at the end of a good warm-up you should be sweating, and if you’re not it’s not good enough.”
In the end, coaches, teammates and others need to be properly warmed up to be successful. Kyle Brennan, a Nonnewaug baseball coach, also sticks with Colavito’s rule of thumb for warm-up sufficiency.
“A warm-up is supposed to prepare you for practice. You need to warm up at the same intensity at which you play,” says Brennan. “You need to legitimately stretch your muscles. It shouldn’t be going through the motions. The most successful teams treat warm-ups seriously. The teams that are not successful treat them as though they’re just going through the motions. You should break a sweat during warm ups, If you’re not, you’re doing it wrong.”
This is the opinion of Anna Crocker, a two-sport Nonnewaug athlete and junior deputy editor-in-chief of the Chief Advocate.
