Warming Up Body And Mind

Picture from Healthywomen.org

All of us are familar with warm ups. Before you run, exercise and especially before a race. You are trying to increase your core temperature, send more blood flow to the limbs and 'wake' the muscles up. Before a running race you may even try some race pace striding so the actual start of the race does not feel like a shock.

So I was surprised to read that combining mental and physical warm ups can improve running times. Curious? Please read on to find out more.

Researchers in that study investigated whether combining cognitive tasks with a standard physical warm up could improve 1-mile performance in runners. 25 runners (11 male, 14 females) with an average weekly mileage of 20 miles (32 km) and 5km personal best timing of 23:31 min were recruited for the study. Each runner completed 3 separate testing sessions.

First was with only a physical warm up which included a 1200m easy jog, 800m alternating 100m jogs and 100m strides and 3 minutes of active stretching drills. 

Next was the same physical warm up plus a low load cognitive task and finally same physical warm up with a high load cognitive task.

In the cognitive warm up conditions, the runners completed four 3-minute cognitive tasks before and between the physical components.These tasks targeted mental functions like switching between tasks, decision making, inhibiting responses to stimuli and memory. They were doing short bursts of focused mental work designed to activate the brain without exhausting it.

 

After that all the runners ran 4 laps of a 400m track with their watch face covered so that they could only rely on feel rather than constant pace feedback.

Ready for the results? The runners were faster after both cognitive plus physical warm ups compared to only doing the physical warm up. The  low load cognitive task improved 1-mile timing by about 8 seconds (2.3%),  while the high load cognitive task improved performance by about 11 seconds (2.8%).

The runners did not appear to muscle their way to faster timings since their perceived effort was lower after the combined warm ups and their average heart rate during the time 1-mile run was also lower. Their readiness to perform was higher, meaning the runners felt more prepared to run hard.

Stride length and cadence did not change meaningfully suggesting that performance boost was not explained by obvious mechanical changes.

Take home message? No, you do not need to download an app to challenge your cognitve skills before every workout or race. However, this study does suggest that the best warm up should prepare both mind and body.

Before you do your track interval sessions, time trials or short, hard and fast sessions or even up to a 5 km race, it may be useful to add a small cognitive task that perhaps include coordination games, quick reaction tasks, fast feet with visual cues to make you engage attention before you start running hard.

The important thing to note is dose. A few short mental tasks coupled with jogging, drills and race pace striding may help you feel sharper and more ready for your workout. A long, draining task may do the opposite.

This sharpens the nervous system rather than stressing your brain. Keep it brief and engaging and please try it in your training first before trying it on race day.

Reference 

Mortimer, H Dallaway N, Diaz-Garcia J et al (2026). Warming Up The Body And Mind: Bombined Cognitive And Exercise Priming Improves 1-Mile Time Trial Performance In Recreational Runners. Eur J Sp Sci. 26(5): e70163. DOI: 10.1002/ejsc.70163