The Runner’s Warm Up Guide: Things You Should Know

Most people tend to skip warm-ups and jump straight into their workout routine, but this can be harmful, strain the muscles and increase the chances of injuries.

Our warm-up guide will give you a complete lowdown on why it is essential to prepare your muscles for exercise and ease them into exercise mode, whether your workout routine comprises strength training, cardio, or you’re playing some sort of sport.

A good warm-up allows you to perform better, offers several fitness rewards, and maximizes the workout outcomes.

So, check out our warm-up guide to know all the benefits of warming up before a workout and examples of warm-up exercises that can move your workout into high gear.

 

How Does a Good Warm-Up Help?

A good warm-up routine gets your body and your nervous system ready for an intense workout and enhances your movement quality. This, in turn, results in more muscle and fewer injuries.

Spending a few minutes pre-workout to perform a few stretches, activation drills, and preparing your body for movement can help in optimal performance.

A warm-up gets the blood in the body flowing, brings fluids to the joints, eliminates the waste from the muscles, opens up your body, and reduces fatigue, preparing the body for a good workout.

According to research, it has been seen that warming up with dynamic stretches that puts your joints through a complete range of motion helps to boost muscular performance.

A warmup helps to improve your posture, sets your joints and muscles in the proper position, and keeps you safe from injuries when you work out.

 

Benefits of a Pre-Workout Warm-Up

A pre-workout warm-up prepares your body for strenuous exercise and makes it a lot easier to work out.

Some of the vital advantages of a warm-up include:

• Helps to enhance flexibility, allowing you to move more easily and exercise correctly.
• Enables the muscles to get warmed up and relaxed, which causes less injury.
• Helps to increase blood flow, ensuring that your muscles receive the nourishment required before an intense workout.
• When the muscles are warmed up, it helps you to work out better and more effectively.
• Warming up offers a wider range of motion, which enables you to move your joints fully.
• Warm and relaxed muscles help to improve mobility with less muscle stiffness or pain.

 

Types of Warm-Up Exercises

The type of warm-up you choose depends on your workout, your physical condition, and other factors. The warm-up may be active or passive and can also include static or dynamic stretches.

Here are some of the different types of warm-up exercises:

• Active Warm-Up: These are the most common form of warm-up exercises. As long as they are not too intense, active warm-ups can help to improve performance by improving the oxygen usage by the body without draining out the energy stores.
• Passive Warm-Up: In this, the body temperature is increased via some external factors, such as a sauna or hot bath, without causing any fatigue.
• Dynamic Stretching: This involves moving the body similarly to the activity you’re going to perform. For instance, swimmers use arm circles and shoulder rolls before swimming.
• Static Stretching: This is typically achieved by holding a particular position for 30-90 seconds.

 

Sample Warm-Up Guide

If you’re unsure about how to warm up before a workout, here is our sample warm-up guide with suggestions for exercises you can try.

Warming Up for Lifting

The idea is to heat your body and work up a light sweat before a workout. When the muscles are warm, they are more flexible and stretch better, without the risk of injury.

It may be a good idea to get on a treadmill, bike, or any other cardio machine and move for around 5-15 minutes. This will also help to get your heart rate up.

Adjust your warm-up according to the kind of workout you will be doing:

• If you’re running, then a bike ride or a light jog is the best.
• If you’re lifting weights, jog for around 15 to 20 minutes and follow up with pull-ups and push-ups or easy reps in the muscle group.

Bend and Flex

This will help to get your body, joints, and tendons loose. Bending forward and backward slowly, twisting at the hips, and bending sideways from the hips are all good bending and flexing exercises.

To this, you can add:

• Flexing your head forward and backward, stretching your neck, side-to-side, and looking left and right
• 20 ankle rotations
• 10 clockwise and 10 anti-clockwise wrist rotations
• Rotating and rolling your shoulders

When warming up, begin with static stretches. i.e., stretching just a single muscle such as your arms, legs, calf muscles, and shins.

You can then move on to dynamic stretches to increase your heart rate, which may include high knees, jumping jacks, swinging your arms from one side to another, etc.

Glute Bridges

Strong glutes are essential for squats, deadlifts, and bench presses, and weaker glutes reduce strength and increase the risk of injuries. Glute bridges are great warm-up exercises.

To do this:

• Lie on your back and bend your knees around 90 degrees.
• Keep your feet and shoulders on the floor.
• Lift your hips while squeezing your glutes without using your hamstrings to lift yourself.
• Lower yourself back to the floor.
• Do 10 to 15 repetitions of this.

Dynamic Warm-ups

Dynamic warm-ups are essentially moving your body to stretch, which helps to activate your muscles by keeping your blood moving.

You can do any 3 of the following dynamic warm-up exercises, including:

• 2 to 3 minutes of jump rope
• 50 jumping jacks
• 5 to 10 lunges
• 20 bodyweight squats
• 10 to 15 knee-high jumps

Leg Warm-Ups

Do some form of cardio for around 5 to 10 minutes, including jogging, biking, etc. Work your muscles gradually up to full speed.

Target Specific Muscles

Target and fire up specific groups of muscles while warming up. This can help to prevent injuries later on.

Do around 25 to 40 yards of each of the following exercises:

• Butt Kicks: Exaggerate the running motion and kick your butt with your heels as you run, after each step.
• High Knees: With every step, lift your knee to the stomach. Focus on landing and springing up from the balls of your feet.
• Shuffle Step: Keeping your shoulders over the ankles and spine erect, move sideways off the balls of your feet.
• Other Exercises: You can try lunges, running backward, bounding, 2-footed leaps, and out-skipping.

Hip Muscles Warm Up

The hip muscles are important to help your pivot and turn and also help to transfer power.

Do 15 to 20 years of the following warm-up exercises to target hip muscles, including:

• Hip Openers: Lift your front knee to the hip while walking sideways. Rotate the knee away from the body slowly so that you turn to face the other direction. Repeat this with the other foot.
• Hip Closers: Pick up the back leg and rotate in front of your body while walking sideways. Repeat after turning on your other foot to face the opposite direction.

Lunges

Strengthening the glutes and quads is essential, especially if you’re jumping and landing or running uphill, and lunges are great warm-up exercises to strengthen these muscles.

To do lunges:

• With either foot, step forward.
• Keep the front knee bent at a 90-degree angle.
• Rest on the toes of the back foot.
• Keeping your front knee still bent at a 90-degree angle, drop your hips towards the ground while keeping your spine erect.
• Raise your hips slowly.
• Then, step forward with the other foot and repeat.
• Repeat the lunges around 10 to 15 times on both sides.

 

Tips for an Effective Warm-Up

The oft-asked question is, “how long should you warm up before a workout?”

A warm-up period of around 5 to 10 minutes is best if you want to warm your muscles and loosen your joints. Warm up for a longer time if you plan a longer and more intense workout.

Here are some tips for an effective warm-up:

• Warm up immediately before a workout, race, game, or other activity.
• Focus on the large muscle groups such as legs, etc., and engage the cardiovascular system.
• Perform warm-ups that mirror the movements you will do when you work out. For example, if you plan to run or cycle, then to warm up, do the same thing at a slower pace.
• Begin slowly and increase the intensity or speed.
• Exercise until you’re slightly sweating but are not exhausted.
• When performing warm-up exercises, perform them in 3 dimensions i.e., sideways, backward, and also use rotational movement patterns if applicable.

• Avoid bend-and-hold stretching or vigorous static stretching, as this can tear your muscle fibers and decrease your performance. Static stretches are best for post-workout or cool-down stretching.
• The most important aspect of working out is to warm up mentally. Research studies show that visualizing how you will succeed on the field or court can improve performance dramatically.

 

Wrapping Up

An important aspect of a workout routine, warm-up exercises, is often overlooked.

Warm-up exercises are essential to get your body primed and your muscles warmed up before you start working out.

Warming up before a workout not only enhances your performance, as well as athletic performance but also reduces the risk of injury.

You can do the same movements, mimicking your main workout but at a slower pace, or you can do a variety of exercises like we have suggested in our warm-up guide.

And, we hope that after reading the warm-up guide, you have all the information, tips, and techniques for an effective pre-workout warm-up.