SPRINTERS and jumpers should wrap themselves in an electric blanket instead of doing a physical warm-up before a race. Researchers in Manchester have discovered that an athlete’s performance improves if their muscles are artificially heated.
“It’s a really significant effect,” says Anthony Sargeant at Manchester Metropolitan University. Muscle power goes up by 8 to 10 per cent for every 1 °C rise in temperature, he says. And heating muscles artificially is better than a physical warm-up in some respects, because the muscles get hotter without becoming fatigued.
The finding could be particularly important for competitors in events such as the…
