Most injury logs begin at the moment something hurts. The minutes before that moment rarely get written down, even though they can show what your body was doing when the trouble started. If you are deciding this week whether to get examined in the St. Louis metro area, a short note about your warm-up can make the first conversation with a clinician more useful.
What counts as a warm-up
A warm-up is anything you did before the session asked hard work from your body. For some people it is a jog around the field. For others it is a set of light squats, band work, or a few minutes on a stationary bike. It can also be less obvious, like walking from the parking lot to the court or standing in the cold for an hour before a game starts. Write down what you did, roughly how long it took, and whether it matched last week. Sameness is the point. A log that shows a changed routine gives a clinician a clue they would otherwise have to guess at.
The four lines to write
Keep the entry short. Start with the date and the session type, then write the warm-up in one line. Next, note the time the hard work started and whether you felt ready or rushed. Last, write any stiffness or tightness you noticed before the first hard rep, along with where it was. Do this on the same day, while the details are fresh. Do not try to rebuild it a week later, because memory tends to fill gaps with what you expected to happen.
An example entry might read: Tuesday practice, 20 minutes easy jog, two sets of walking lunges, first sprint at 6:40, tight feeling in the left hamstring before the first sprint. That is enough. You do not need to explain why you think it happened. Just record what was there.
When the warm-up is missing
A skipped warm-up is also an entry. Sometimes practice starts late, a coach cuts the routine short, or you arrive from work and go straight into drills. Log that too, using plain words like no warm-up, went straight to live drills. Over several weeks, a pattern like this can help you and an examiner tell whether symptoms follow a particular kind of session or a particular change in routine. Without the note, those patterns are easy to miss.
Warm-up changes can also mean a new surface, a different shoe, or a cold start after a long drive. Pick out only what was different, rather than writing everything down every time. Then note how long after the warm-up any symptoms showed up. Was it during the session, right after, or the next morning? That timing is useful information, and it costs only a few seconds to write.
Keep the record honest
Write the warm-up as it happened, not as you wish it had happened. If you rushed it, say so. If you skipped the stretching you planned, say that. The record is for your own review and for the people who will examine you, and an accurate entry is more useful than a flattering one.
Whether to get examined is a separate question from what your log says. If you have sudden swelling, numbness, trouble bearing weight, or pain that wakes you at night or does not ease with rest, do not wait for another week of entries. Contact a clinician promptly. A written warm-up note can support that visit, but it does not replace one.
This article is educational and does not diagnose anything. Your log is a tool for describing what happened, and a licensed clinician in the St. Louis area can decide what it means for you. Bring the entries with you, read them aloud if that helps, and let the examiner ask follow-up questions.