Exploring acute effects of workplace warm-up intervention on pain, physical capacities, and productivity in agriculture: A study protocol.

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 or the need for an instructor, these supervised programs are rather difficult to implement. For this reason, numerous companies, especially companies in manual sectors, are turning to another solution, i.e. warm-up intervention before the work shift. These interventions present various advantages such as short duration and the possibility to perform exercises in working clothes. Surprisingly, while the positive effects of warm-up interventions on pain, performance, and physical and psychological capacities are expansively reported in the sport context, effects of workplace warm-up intervention are lacking.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to assess the acute effects of three different warm-up interventions on physical (pain, strength, flexibility) and psychological (workload) functions and also on work-related outcomes (work performance, readiness to work) among vineyard workers.

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.

CONCLUSION: 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, and physical and psychological capacities among vineyard workers.