Post-warm-up muscle temperature maintenance: blood flow contribution and external heating optimisation

Passive muscle heating has been shown to reduce the drop in post-warm-up muscle temperature (T m) by about 25 % over 30 min, with concomitant sprint/power performance improvements. We sought to determine the role of leg blood flow in this cooling and whether optimising the heating procedure would further benefit post-warm-up T m maintenance. Ten male cyclists completed 15-min sprint-based warm-up followed by 30 min recovery. Vastus lateralis T m (T mvl) was measured at deep-, mid- and superficial-depths before and after the warm-up, and after the recovery period (POST-REC). During the recovery period, participants wore water-perfused trousers heated to 43 °C (WPT43) with either whole leg he…