Effects of Three Warm-up Interventions at the Workplace Among Vineyard Workers - a Protocol Study

Background:

Physical activity programs at the workplace have shown positive results on physical capacities and pain for several years. Due to the duration of the training session, the need of instructor, and the need of a place to practice, these programs are commonly complex to implement. For this reason, many of companies, especially companies in manual sectors are turning to another solution, i.e warm-up intervention before work shift. These interventions present on paper numerous advantages such as short duration, no need to specifically allocate a place in companies and the possibility to perform exercises in working clothes… Surprisingly, while positive effects of warm-up interventions on pain, performance physical and psychological capacities, are expansively reported in sport context, effects of workplace warm-up intervention are lacking. Therefore, the aims of this study are (1) to implement such intervention among vineyard-workers, workers highly exposed to heavy physical workload and pain and (2) to assess their effects on physical (pain, strength, flexibility) and psychological (workload) functions and also on work-related outcomes (work performance, readiness to work)

Methods:

A cluster randomized study will be implemented among French vineyard workers. Four groups of 30 participants will be constituted; corresponding to four different conditions: (1) hybrid warm-up intervention (HWU); (2) dynamic warm-up intervention (DWU); (3) stretching warm-up intervention (SWU); (4) no warm-up intervention (NWU). A total of 120 vineyard-workers will be recruited to participate in the study.

Discussion:

The results will provide more evidence about the short-term effects of warm-up interventions at the workplace, and will provide more evidence on which warm-up modality is the most effective on pain, performance, physical and psychological capacities among vineyard workers.