There’s no strong evidence that if you warm up, you will reduce your risk of injury, but there is evidence that warming up can improve your performance. Five to 10 minutes of aerobic exercise will raise your muscle temperature and your heart rate so that more oxygen reaches your muscles. Warming up also provides an opportunity to incorporate beneficial exercises such as strengthening and control work.

Whether or not you warm up will probably depend on how long and how hard you plan to work out. If you have 20 minutes for a run, you could just put your shoes on and go. If you are about to take part in a race, such as a Parkrun-type event, you might want to warm up for 15 or 20 minutes. Elite athletes will warm up for 45 minutes to an hour before they go into competition, and may do specific exercises such as “strides” – race-pace speeds to prepare the body. You don’t need to do that if you’re going for a gentle jog around the park. If you’re really unfit, you could warm up with a walk-run.

As far as stretching is concerned, it also doesn’t prevent injury, and there is a school of thought that if you do lots of sustained static stretching – holding a position – it can dampen down some of the force your muscles can produce. Most athletes will do more “dynamic mobility” work, where you take your joints through their range of motion, rather than holding a stretch.

Toby Smith is technical lead physiotherapist at the English Institute of Sport. He was talking to Emine Saner