Dr Sharmel­la Roopc­hand Mar­tin & Dr Dasi­ma Mar­tin

Foot­ball is the most pop­u­lar sport in the world and the Caribbean. Re­gard­less of which is­land you vis­it, the game is played by peo­ple from all walks of life.

Those en­gaged in the sport at a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el ben­e­fit from or­gan­ised train­ing ses­sions con­duct­ed un­der the guid­ance of ap­pro­pri­ate­ly qual­i­fied per­son­nel. The ses­sions will in­clude in­te­grat­ing ac­tiv­i­ties to re­duce in­jury risk. Recre­ation­al play­ers, how­ev­er, are a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, and it is not un­com­mon for those of us in health­care to see these play­ers pre­sent­ing to our prac­tices with pre­ventable in­juries.

A re­cent sur­vey con­duct­ed by Dr Akash Dhanai, a grad­u­ate stu­dent from the Mas­ter’s in Sports Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), found that foot­ball was the sec­ond most com­mon cause of sport and recre­ation­al in­juries among the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go over six months.

In­ter­na­tion­al sports or­gan­i­sa­tions have fo­cused a lot on in­jury pre­ven­tion, and the In­ter­na­tion­al Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (FI­FA) is no dif­fer­ent. The FI­FA 11+ in­jury pre­ven­tion pro­gramme com­pris­es 15 warm-up ex­er­cis­es be­fore play­ing, which re­search has shown help­ful in in­jury pre­ven­tion. The find­ings for in­jury pre­ven­tion are sim­i­lar for oth­er sports, where warm-ups are in­te­gral in train­ing ses­sions. The FI­FA 11+ in­jury pre­ven­tion pro­gramme has been adopt­ed by oth­er sports.

Recre­ation­al foot­ballers fre­quent the UWI Mona Bowl in Ja­maica, and we sought to ex­plore their knowl­edge, at­ti­tude, and prac­tice about warm-up be­fore play­ing. A to­tal of 138 male recre­ation­al foot­ballers be­tween 18 and 30 years took part in our sur­vey. Over 90 per cent re­port­ed that they had been play­ing for over six years, and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 per cent played three or more times per week. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 64 per cent re­port­ed sus­tain­ing at least one in­jury in the past year while play­ing foot­ball.

Most per­sons en­gaged in some form of warm-up be­fore play­ing, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent in­di­cat­ing that they al­ways did a warm-up be­fore play­ing, 5.2 per cent say­ing they rarely en­gaged in warm-up, and 0.7 per cent in­di­cat­ing they nev­er did a warm-up. The du­ra­tion of the warm-up ranged from five min­utes to 20 min­utes for most of the group, with on­ly 10.4 per cent spend­ing less than five min­utes to warm up. They used a range of ac­tiv­i­ties for the warm-up, in­clud­ing whole-body move­ments like run­ning, jog­ging, side shuf­fles, high knees, skip­ping, back­ward lunges, and side hops.

Most of the par­tic­i­pants were of the view that the warm-up was im­por­tant for in­jury pre­ven­tion (69 per cent), it im­proved blood flow to the mus­cles be­fore the start of the game (96.2 per cent), it im­proved flex­i­bil­i­ty (78.9 per cent), and it im­proved phys­i­cal per­for­mance dur­ing the game (82.8 per cent). A small per­cent­age (3.8 per cent), how­ev­er, be­lieved that pre-game warm-up could lead to ear­ly fa­tigue, and 6.6 per cent felt that a warm-up was a waste of time.

When asked about the com­po­nents that should be in­clud­ed in warm-up ex­er­cis­es to help pre­vent in­jury, a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of re­spon­dents high­light­ed the im­por­tance of “mo­bil­i­ty” (82.2 per cent), “sta­t­ic stretch­ing” (72.6 per cent), strength­en­ing (54.8 per cent) and “bal­ance” (50.4 per cent). It is worth not­ing that the lit­er­a­ture in the past ten or more years does not ad­vo­cate for sta­t­ic stretch­ing as part of a warm-up for sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties that in­clude ex­plo­sive pow­er. In­stead, dy­nam­ic stretch­es are an in­te­gral part of the rou­tine that is al­so in the FI­FA 11+ pro­gramme.

Among the foot­ballers sur­veyed, 31.1 per cent re­port­ed of­ten learn­ing from their own per­son­al tri­al and er­ror or per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, 25 per cent of re­spon­dents in­di­cat­ed they fre­quent­ly re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from health­care providers. The in­ter­net was al­so a promi­nent source of in­for­ma­tion (20.9 per cent). Oth­er foot­ballers were al­so in­flu­en­tial, as 17.2 per cent re­port­ed re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion from their peers. A small per­cent­age (4.5 per cent) re­lied on sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals for their warm-up in­for­ma­tion.

While most peo­ple have ad­e­quate knowl­edge re­gard­ing warm-ups and good prac­tices, there still needs to be a knowl­edge deficit lead­ing to what could be pre­ventable in­juries. A prop­er warm-up can be a se­cret weapon on the foot­ball field. It can boost your per­for­mance and pro­tect you from in­juries. But it’s not just about know­ing; it’s about do­ing. So, next time you’re gear­ing up for a game, take a few ex­tra min­utes to warm-up. Your body will thank you for it. If you are a foot­baller, you should check out the FI­FA 11+. While this study opens the door to warm-up wis­dom, it’s not the fi­nal word. There is a lot more to learn about this es­sen­tial pre-game rit­u­al. Un­til then, keep those mus­cles warm and your spir­its high. Foot­ball is all about fun and stay­ing in­jury-free—so let’s make every game count!

Dr Sharmel­la Roopc­hand Mar­tin is a se­nior lec­tur­er in the Fac­ul­ty of Sport at UWI

Dr Dasi­ma Mar­tin is a re­cent grad­u­ate of the MSc Sports Med­i­cine, UWI Fac­ul­ty of Sport