ABSTRACT

Different studies suggest that people who participate physical activity have beneficial effect on their health and physical condition but also participation physical activity carries certain risk for sports injuries. It is essential to participate warm up, cooling down, stretching, balance, coordi-nation and proprioception exercises for prevention of sports injuries. The warm-up and stretc-hing exercises have become historically routine. Recently importance of proprioception is un-derstanding although there were not enough studies on underlying mechanism of propriocep-tion and balance. Warm up and stretching exercises are possible parameters affecting balance and proprioception. The purpose of present review is to analyze the effect of warm up and stretching exercise on balance and proprioception. For this review, the pubmed database was searched using terms warm up, stretching, balance and proprioception. In the literature generally warm up and stretching have positive effect on balance and proprioception. Few studies showed that warm up and stretching have no effect or negative effect on balance and proprioception. In the studies to be performed afterwards, usage of shorter periods of stretching applied in the sports fields will be more appropriate. While designing the studies, it will be proper to use stretching times similar to stretching times applied by the athletes while warming up additional to designing of the activities in a controlled and randomized manner, comparison of different age groups to each other and performing also a comparison among the groups with different physical fitness conditions.

Keywords: Warm Up, Balance, Stretching, Proprioception