How to Warm Up for a Run

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is David Brown and today we're going to talk about how to warm up for a run. Now, beginning any kind of activity whether it's a run or anything else, you want to start with just some light movements to get your body in the right frame of mind. I like to recommend a couple stretches but the easiest stretch is just something like this. You're rolling your shoulders out, bending over at the hips nice and slow down to your toes and standing back up. These are nice and slow, controlled movements. You want to do a couple of those and let your legs know that they're there. Stretch your hamstrings a little bit maybe get your quads going a little bit, anything that lets your joints start moving. After that you want to kind of progress into a walk, maybe a jog, a light skip or even some calisthenics for roughly five to ten minutes. Just to get your blood pumping, get your body ready for some exercise. After that, you want to do some static stretching, probably full body, everything from your neck to your major muscle groups like your chest, your quads, your hamstrings. You don't want to forget the small muscle groups such as your shoulders, your hip flexors, your calves, and even doing things like stretching out your wrists. These are all great ideas to make sure that you don't get hurt when you're about to go into a run. Now, as you're getting into your run you just want to start very calmly, start at a nice pace, something that's controllable. Something that is going to keep your heart rate down and keep your breathing rate down. You want to slowly progress into that run, maybe five or ten minutes into your run where you can start getting into a pace where your comfortable at, that your feel that you can progress through."