One of the most forgotten training strategies (especially among beginners), is the importance of a proper warmup (and cooldown) routine. Even more striking, this is seen as separated from the infamous “stretching” that beginners and more advanced runners, too, try to avoid at all costs.

But why is it important? What does it matter that you pre-run whenever you are going for a run?!

Think about a car. Didn’t your parents and instructors tell you to be careful when starting your car “cold”, and careful about driving faster for the first 10-15 minutes? If not, they should have.

We are not cars, of course. We aren’t made of metal, and we don’t burn gasoline to produce power. But our musculoskeletal system is not always ready to roll! Tendons and muscles get stiff with the modern daily life made of sitting, sitting, sitting.

Rip out a fast workout when they are in that dormant condition, is a recipe for disaster – injury at worst, bad performance at best.

Always walk before running, and run slowly before running faster. Let your body increase a bit the temperature, let your heart rate go solidly in middle zone 1 (usually before we start running, our heart rate should stay just at or below Z1 if we configured our zones correctly). Blood will flow to the muscles, energy systems will get primed, and mentally, too, you’ll see a benefit – you’ll get in the rhythm.

A solid, long warmup brings also performance improvements in workouts as well as races. As a rule of thumb, the shorter the race, the longer the warmup. I’ve had success with 5km warmup for a 3K time trial, which included some minutes at Z3 and at Z4, as well as strides in the last km. All done in a way to achieve full recovery and not be tired at the end, but giving a boost to the lactate clearance and conversion system which would be called up immediately in such a high-effort race.

But that’s not all you need. Simply walking and running, even varying speed a bit, won’t prime your body perfectly for harder efforts. You want to make sure different muscles are activated, that the tendons have found their right flexibility and snappiness after a long day at work perhaps.

So enters dynamic stretching. It’s not advised to do deep static stretches before a run, as it decreases performance over time and might even increase injury risk. You can however add some exercises to your warmup, and this will help greatly with preparing you to your run – as well as help prevent injuries on the long term. Here’s a great example of a dynamic warmup routine:

Same goes for the cool down. Your muscles and soft tissue will have taken a beating, so it’s time to release any eventual contraction that may carry on for hours or days if left unattended:

With this simple additions to all of your runs, your journey will be much safer and effective. Although it’s not enough, if you have muscle weaknesses.. that will need strengthening. But this is a topic for another day 🙂