Page 117 - Safe Wrestling

8

Overview of Injury-Prevention

Warm-Up Programmes
in Combat Sports

Marina Dobnik, Rok Vatovec, and Matej Plevnik
© 2026 Marina Dobnik, Rok Vatovec, and Matej Plevnik
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-570-2.8

Introduction
Combat sports expose athletes to a high-risk training environment in
which injuries frequently occur during routine practice and not solely
during competition (Del Vecchio et al., 2018). This makes time-efficient,
coach-delivered prevention strategies particularly valuable (Stegerhoek
et al., 2025). Warm-up programmes are especially attractive in this con-
text because they can be implemented consistently across groups and
integrated into standard training sessions without requiring substantial
modifications to the overall training structure (Štyriak et al., 2023).
In broader sporting contexts, structured neuromuscular warm-up
programmes have been repeatedly evaluated and are commonly dis-
cussed as practical models for injury-risk reduction at the team and club
level (Eser et al., 2025; Lutz et al., 2024). Contemporary sports-medicine
literature further emphasises that dynamic warm-ups can improve neu-
romuscular readiness and may contribute to injury-risk reduction when
they include multi-component elements such as strength exercises, bal-
ance and control tasks, and sport-specific movement preparation (Sople
& Wilcox, 2025; Stergiou et al., 2025). Meta-analytic evidence also sup-
ports the inclusion of dynamic stretching within warm-up routines when
performance enhancement and lower-limb range of motion are consid-
ered relevant outcomes (Esteban-García et al., 2024; Li et al., 2023).
Within combat sports, an additional challenge is that warm-ups must
prepare athletes for explosive actions, rapid changes of direction (Ter-
balyan et al., 2025), and contact- or opponent-driven perturbations,

Plevnik, M., & Dobnik, M. (2026). Safe wrestling.
University of Primorska Press.