Effects of a warm-up intervention at the workplace on pain, heart rate, work performance and psychological perception among vineyard workers

ABSTRACT

Objectives

Warm-up sessions before physical activity are widely used in sports to help prevent injury and improve performance. Nowadays, companies assume that the effects observed in a sport context can be transferred to the workplace, particularly among workers exposed to biomechanical strain. Yet research on the use of warm-up interventions at the workplace is rather scarce and, when available, leads to conflicting results due to the low quality of the studies. To the best of our knowledge, there are no published studies to date assessing the effects of warm-up sessions among vineyard workers. The present study was designed to investigate if and how a single supervised warm-up session could be effective on perceived pain intensity, heart rate, work performance, and psychological perceptions among vineyard workers.

Methods

A total of 31 vineyard workers completed a randomized crossover study at the workplace. They were observed in real work settings, i.e. during the pruning activity. Each participant performed the activity under two conditions: 1) with a warm-up session beforehand (WU) and 2) without any warm-up (NWU). Heart rate (HR) was assessed continuously before and during the warm-up, and during the first hour of pruning. Perceived pain intensity over fifteen anatomical locations was assessed before (T0) and immediately after (T1) warm-up, and after the first hour of work (T2). Readiness to work was assessed at T1. Work performance was assessed in terms of the number of completed tasks (number of pruned vines). Perceived work quality and perceived work ability were assessed at T2.

Results

Perceived pain intensity over the lumbopelvic region was significantly higher at T2 than at T0, and at T2 than at T1, in both WU and NWU. Perceived pain intensity was not significantly different at T2 in WU and NWU. HR at T1 was significantly higher in WU than in NWU. Work performance, readiness to work, and perceived work ability were significantly higher in WU than in NWU.

Conclusion

This study showed that offering vineyard workers a supervised warm-up session at the workplace can lead to promising results where work performance and psychological perception are concerned.

KEYWORDS:

• Warm-up exercise
• workers
• pain
• vineyard

Acknowledgments

Authors are grateful to the vineyard-workers and to the direction of the Château Beychevelle, the Château Camensac, the Château Clarke, the Château Haut-Bages Libéral, the Château Palmer and the Vignobles de Larose for their active participation in this study.

Disclosure statement

All authors are memberships of Opti'Mouv, a company that provides workplace health promotion services as workplace physical activity programs.

Additional information

Funding

This study is part of the PhD thesis of the first author Nicolas Larinier. The PhD thesis is promoted by the University of Grenoble Alpes and partially financed by the “Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche” via the “Association Nationale Recherche Technologie” (ANRT) by means of the “Convention Industrielle de Formation par la Recherche” (CIFRE) grant (n° 2019/0488) with the Opti’Mouv company. The founding source has no role in the study design, data collection, results interpretation or manuscript writing.