Running Warm Up Drills: How to Prepare For Your Workout
Updated: Oct 26
Why are running warm-up drills important?
Warm-ups are one of those things that we kind of know we need to do, we may know a couple of reasons why doing running warm-up drills is important for our performance but often we don't know how to properly do a warm-up effectively.
What blows my mind is the actual benefits of running a proper warm-up for your long-term performance. It is one of the most underrated ways to learn how to run with proper efficiency!!!
This guide will give you all the information you need about which runs you may need a warm-up for, the benefits of a warm-up, and how to do an optimal warm-up to get you ready to run your best.
When done properly running warm-up drills can:
Increase your sprint speed
Improve your power
Increase your flexibility and range of motion
Improve your running form
Decrease your risk of injury
Train your fast-twitch muscle fibers
Improves your co-ordination
Wakes up the neuromuscular system
Get your body ready to run fast for your session/workout
Do a pulse raiser first.
Before we go and get into any running-specific drills which you may see a lot of faster runners doing, we need to do a pulse raiser.
A pulse raiser just means some very easy exercise to raise our pulse a little bit, seeing as we are warming up for running, it makes sense that we do a slow jog as our pulse raiser. This slow jog should start very very slow, just to get your muscles moving and loosen up a little bit. View your pulse raiser the same way you would view a recovery run, by this I mean start slow- can even be a walk if you like- and then slowly increase the pace as your muscles start to loosen off. The idea of a pulse raiser is just to loosen off our legs so that they are ready to do the dynamic stretches that come before the running warm-up drills.
Top tip: If you are extra stiff before your run then pop a pair of compression sleeves on to help you warm-up and prevent injuries.
Disclaimer: A warm-up can be as long as you like and it should vary depending on your ability. For some a 5-minute jog, 5 minutes of dynamic stretches, and 5 minutes of running drills are enough for their warm-up.
However, for some a warm-up makes up a good part of their weekly mileage, I always used to stick to a 2-3 mile warm up and warm down and doing this 3 times a week. This meant I was running 12-18 miles in just warm-ups and warm-downs, these miles still count as miles especially if they were either side of a tempo as these were just miles making the run a longer continuous run.
I have even known some people to do a 4-mile warm-up and warm-down. This makes up a lot of their miles and they would use about 3 of these miles at the low end of an easy run pace and they would get huge aerobic gains from these runs. These runners were doing 8-mile tempos which were effectively just slotted into a 16-mile run as they had a 4-mile warm-up and warm-down on either side, but they would do the same warm-up and warm-down for their hill sessions, etc.
Then do some dynamic stretches.
Dynamic stretches mean you are putting your body in a position where you are going to stretch a muscle but you only hold it for 1-3 seconds. Dynamic stretches are often the part of the warm-up that goes neglected by a lot of runners, especially if someone is in a hurry and doesn't have as much time as they would like. However, dynamic stretches offer many benefits and are quite an enjoyable part of my warm-up, to be honest.
Dynamic stretches offer many benefits to your pre-run warm-up routine.
These benefits include:
Increased range of motion
Increased mobility
Increased flexibility
Improved blood flow
Increases stride length
Improves athletic performance
Reduces delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)
Improved running economy
Most importantly- reduces the risk of injury
One other benefit is that it teaches your body to relax and contract muscles at the right time, improving sequencing to improve your economy. For example when you do a dynamic stretch for your hip flexor, your glute contracts, and when you do a dynamic stretch for your glute, your hip flexor contracts.
More importantly, right after a muscle is stretched it has to contract again, but you need the right dynamic stretches for this (I will show you a great routine below). For example, when you stretch your calf you then go up on your toes to contract it, this teaches your body to allow a muscle to fully stretch (like loading up an elastic band) and then tell it to fire with more power- this is a great way to teach your body how to run with effortless power!
This teaches your body to relax a muscle before contracting it to allow your body to fully access a long stride where muscles activate at the right, instead of muscles firing at the wrong time when you are trying to run fast which causes a shorter stride.
Something which is really important for runners is improving flexibility, range of motion, and mobility. This allows you to run with an elegant long stride, just like the elites. Although you may need some good runner specific strength training to get to that level.
The thing is though, you are a runner- you hate stretching, it's in your nature to hate stretching.
What you can do is develop your flexibility with static stretches and by using a foam roller. Then when you have good enough flexibility you use dynamic stretches to maintain your flexibility and mobility.
So, improve your flexibility with 4-6 weeks of static stretching and then you can maintain this level of flexibility with minimal effort!
Your dynamic stretching routine:
These are the dynamic stretches I have used for the past 10 years and I find them to be perfect. They teach your muscles to relax and contract at the right time, by putting your body in a position where the right muscle is stretched whilst the right muscle contracts. This routine also stretches every muscle in your body that is used in running and gets them to contract right after to teach your muscles how to work with maximal efficiency.
Finally, do your running warm-up drills
So, I feel I have gone very in-depth about how to get to the point of your warm-up where you start to do your running warm-up drills. Hopefully, now you are starting to understand how a warm-up is a really quick and effective way to improve your running performance to take you to the next level.
Now, it's time for your warm-up drills to get you primed for running.
Why do warm-up drills for running
Warm-up drills for running get your body primed and ready to run faster, they activate and train your fast twitch muscle fibers to improve your sprint speed. They also exaggerated perfect running form to get your body to a point where you can run with a better economy.
Warm-up running drills are a vital way to improve your running form and develop your sprint speed. For sprinters, a huge chunk of their sessions are dedicated to running form drills and focusing on doing these drills as perfectly as possible. You can train your fast twitch muscle fibers with these drills in a position that you are not able to get in when just running. This means you training muscle fibres which are not usually trained so you can improve your ability to recruit these fast twitch muscle fibres and then you can use them to get a stronger, more powerful, longer stride.
Overview of the benefits of doing warm-up drills:
Improved athletic performance
Improved mobility
Train fast twitch muscle fibers
Improved sprint speed
Improved running form/economy
Reduced injury rate
Improves co-ordination
Wakes up the neuromuscular system
Get your body ready to run fast for your session/workout
Your warm-up drills for running
These are the warm-up drills I have used before running for about 1o years and they get your body ready in the perfect way for your session/workout. These drills start slow and then focus on some faster movements to train your fast-twitch muscle fibers.
How long should my warm-up be?
Your pulse raiser can be anything from 800m to 4 miles, you can choose if your dynamic stretches take 3 minutes or 15 minutes depending on how many times you repeat each movement and you're running warm-up drills can take 3-15 minutes as well depending on how long you do each drill for.
Overall, you can do an amazing warm-up which will get you primed for your session and also help with your long-term running performance in all of about 10 minutes. Which seems like a bargain to me!
However, you can make this warm-up routine last 30-60 minutes if you really want to, just by doing a longer pulse raiser, a lot of dynamic stretches, and drills, this warm-up has everything.
Lastly, don't forget some strides.
Strides are just accelerations to about 90% sprint speed where you focus fully on form and last about 50-100m. You should add 2-8 strides into your warm-up after your drills and take a slow walk back after.
Strides are a key part of every warm-up and they boast many benefits and should never be left out of a warm-up routine.
Key benefits of strides include:
Increase stride length
Increase running economy
Makes race pace feel easier
Improved sprint speed
Gets your body ready for faster training
Reduced risk of injury
Improved recovery
Trains your ATP-PC system
Faster kick at the end of your races
Trains fast twitch muscle fibers
Improves neuromuscular co-ordination
What runs do I need to warm up for?
Warm-ups should be used for any of your faster runs like sessions/warm-ups. If you are going to do a 5k session, tempo run, or anything that involves faster running then I heavily advise adding a good warm-up.
I also used to use dynamic stretches, drills, and then strides at the end of my easy runs as an extra time to get the benefits of these drills and improve my performance. I found huge benefits to adding these after easy runs.
Top tip on running a good warm-up
A key part of what a warm-up does is it gets you physiologically ready to run fast. Therefore, you should keep your warm-up consistent every time you do it, so that you are always mentally ready to run well.
So, when it comes to race day doing the same warm-up is a key part of running well and being mentally ready on that start line. Doing the same warm-up for your sessions/workouts will be a huge part of securing a PB on race day!
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