Using a Heating Pad is not the same thing as Warming Up

Many performers – most often, they’re dancers (sorry, guys, but it’s true) – think that if they use a heating pad for a few minutes before a workout, rehearsal, or a performance they will be properly warmed up and ready for physical activity.  While using a heating pad can help achieve some of the things you need from a proper warm-up, it can’t do all of them.

When sports medicine professionals, like athletic trainers, tell you to warm up before you start a workout or a rehearsal, they don’t mean that they want a part of your body (say, your hamstring) to feel hot to the touch.  What they mean is they want you to go through the process of physiologically warming up.  Basically, they want you to do several minutes’ worth of light exercising that elevates your heart rate.

Why?

Raising your heart rate (making your heart beat faster) naturally increases blood flow throughout your body.  It also raises your internal body temperature.  These two changes together mean that you have warmer blood pumping more quickly through your entire body which leads to elevated muscle temperature.  When your muscle tissue is warmer, it has something known as increased extensibility.  This simply means that the muscle tissue is more pliable and is able to stretch farther and faster more safely than when your muscle is not warmed up.

Properly warming up – by doing things like jogging or riding an exercise bike for 5-10 minutes – before performing more vigorous physical activities (like jumping, sprinting, lifting weights) can help protect you against developing injuries like muscle strains.

Applying a heat pack helps increase blood flow and obviously heats up the blood that passes through that body part, but the effects are limited to the region of the body that has the heat pack on it.  Also, a heat pack does not raise your heart rate, which means that the heated blood is not being pumped throughout the body as quickly as it is when you’re jogging to warm up.  So, while a heat pack may make some of your skin, muscle tissue, and blood warmer than warming up does, the effect is extremely limited by comparison.

So does this mean that heat packs are “bad” or that we shouldn’t use them?  Of course not.  Heat packs can be very useful as a part of your warm up routine, but they should not be used as a substitute for light physical activity to warm up.  Heat packs are especially useful in your warm up routine if you are returning to physical activity from a nagging muscular injury.

Note: Your warm up should always come before you stretch.  Dynamic stretching/warm up can be included in your pre-workout/pre-rehearsal routine as well.  Dynamic stretches should be targeted to stretch the muscles that will be taxed the most during the upcoming activity.  For example, a ballet dancer who is about to start a rehearsal with several large battements or quick penchés would want to do dynamic warm up exercises for the hamstring.