How to Warmup

by Rob McCartney
(Dublin, Ireland)

How does one warmup before the running sessions ?

"Hi Marius,

I've just started the 100 day program and I'm in Intro week 1.

I'm pretty new to running and there is a lot of conflicting information out there on warmups. I'm appy to trust your view that static stretching before or after is probably counterproductive.

However, I'm no wiser to what I SHOULD be doing. Is there a particular dynamic warmup routine you could suggest for each type of session (i.e. hard, medium or easy sessions)?

I'm looking for something detailed and prescriptive to make up for my lack of knowledge in the area of athletics. When someone says do a lunge that's great but how deep, how many are questions I don't know the answer for?

Whle you're answering that, is there a particular cooldown that you would recommend where SS are not used? For example (5 mins at HRM Lvl 1)

Thanks

Rob"

Answer: Hi Rob, I answered a similar question here : Warm up before hard running and it pretty much sums it up : before your hard runs, do 5-10 minutes of Effort 1 running. It is no more complicated than that. You can finish this with about 3-4 strides of 10 seconds that should not be sprints but at floating pace (about the same as your Effort 3 pace). Have about 30-40 seconds break between each stride.

After the runs, either the SS* when noted or 5-10 minutes easy running.

I do not want to complicate it more than this, I've tested different approaches to this (even using a lactate meter on the coming session) and it really is that simple. The "gold" here is the SS* which will help your recovery quite a bit after hard runs.

Now, before races of 5k or 10k (where you have quite a bit of effort from the beginning ) you may want to do 3 minutes of Effort 3 at the end of the warmup. This is what I personally prefer before races. So this is the only "expection" to the above. End this 3 minute at Effort 3 about 15-20 minutes before the race.

Thanks again for your question and I wish you all the best with your training !

Kind regards,
Marius

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