Research

Mixed

A task-specific warm-up does not improve peak or mean anaerobic power in untrained individuals and may increase fatigue index due to premature glycogen depletion.

If you are not highly trained, avoid high-intensity warm-ups before anaerobic tests like the Wingate. They may deplete your glycogen and increase fatigue without improving your power output. Focus on a low-intensity, non-fatiguing warm-up if you choose to warm up at all.

ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
These findings suggest that our UT subjects were fatiguing themselves during the WU... A significant correlation (r = 0.45, p = 0.03) was obtained between WU intensity and FI.
John A. Hawley et al. · British Journal of Sports Medicine · 1989

Why this rating

Randomized controlled trial with counterbalanced design, but small sample size (n=24) and specific to untrained males.

Source

Effects of a task-specific warm-up on anaerobic power.

John A. Hawley et al. · British Journal of Sports Medicine · 1989

DOI 10.1136/bjsm.23.4.233

crossover · n=24Cited 33×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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