In this short blog post I will take you through a warmup example to prepare you for the workout and help you to avoid injuries. I suspect there are some of you out there that simply just throw on the shoes, head out the door and go straight into a tough running session without warming up correctly. Although it might be acceptable to skip the stretches and warm up drills on the days that you are just heading out for an easy jog, it is very important that you prepare your body If you are doing some faster interval style sessions in your training. For example, 200m, 400m or longer 1km repeats. Your body needs to be warmed up well before diving into this kind of training to enable it to handle the increase in intensity.
Running can be part of the warmup to raise body temperature however running alone is generally not enough to prepare the body for intense activity. The following exercises will help with mobility through the joints, strength and running economy. Without going into too much detail, running economy is simply the oxygen cost of maintaining a certain pace and it is one of the three big contributors to distance running performance along with Vo2 max and lactate threshold.
After raising your body temperature with an easy warm up jog, I recommend completing two rounds of the exercises below followed by six 80m strides before starting any interval style session.
- World’s greatest stretch 5 each side
- Walking Figure four 10m
- Walking lunge with Overhead reach 10m
- Arabesque 10m
- Knee hug skip 10m
- Fast feet to high kick 10m
- High knee runs 10m
- A-skip 10m
- Power skip 10m
Watch the video above for a quick demonstration of each exercise. A warmup does not need to be complicated and should not be avoided. We put our bodies under a lot of stress especially during tough interval sessions, so it is vital we warm up our muscles correctly beforehand.
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