Warm-up prior to undertaking a dynamic psychomotor task: does it aid performance?

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of differing types of warm-up on the performance of a psychomotor skill that required quick reaction and movement times (MTs), and whole-body co-ordination.

Subjects (n=12) carried out a psychomotor task which involved reacting to 1 of 3 lights, then running through a slalom course before kicking a mini-soccer ball at a target. The task was completed following rest, a physical warm-up, a skill-specific warm-up and a skill plus physical warm-up. In the physical, and skill plus physical warm-ups the subjects cycled on an ergometer at a workload calculated to induce exercise at their lactate threshold. The outcome dependent variables were time to initiate a movement (reaction time), time to complete the slalom run (MT) and two measures of passing accuracy(constant error and variable error. Biomechanical variables(knee, hip and ankle angles, and horizontal and vertical ankle velocities at contact(were also compared.

A repeated measures analysis of variance showed no significant effect of warm-up type on any of the dependent variables. Stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that changes in heart rate from resting values to those before performance of the skill test (D HR pre-performance) and those after performance of the test (D HR post-performance) combined were significant predictors of MT (R(2)=0.31, P<0.001), while D HR post-performance significantly predicted reaction time (R(2)=0.12, P<0.02).

It was concluded that warm-up provided no significant benefit in performance for a task that was dynamic in nature but that physical arousal probably aids reaction and MTs.