Acute effects of an injury preventive warmup programme on unanticipated jump-landing-task performance in adult football players: A crossover trial.

ABSTRACT

HIGHLIGHTS Adapting movements rapidly to unanticipated external stimuli (e.g. unexpected landings) is crutial to prevent injuries in footballIt is unclear wether popular neuromuscular injury preventive warmup programmes (e.g. Prevent injury and Enhance Performance (PEP)) adaquatly prepare athletes for these situationsOur study shows that the PEP warm up programme has acute effects on anticipated landing stability, but no influence on unanticipated landings or decision making qualityClassic neuromuscular warm up programmes may not be the optimal choice to prepare athletes properly for the upcoming motor-cognitive demands in a football match.