How to Do a Running Warm Up: 5 Simple Exercises You Can Try Today

Runners are notorious for neglecting the warm-up and just heading straight out onto the road or trails. Runners are also notorious for getting injured (correlation, maybe?). Learning how to do a proper running warm up can save you days, weeks, and months of recovery by preventing injury and improving overall performance, regardless of your current level of fitness. 

What Is a Warm Up?

A running warm up is a set of preparatory exercises and activities performed before a running session or race. Its purpose is to gradually increase heart rate, body temperature, and blood flow to the muscles, preparing you for the physical and mental demands of running, consequently reducing the risk of injury.

Warming up is important because you’re about to place an incredible amount of stress on the body through your run. Your muscles get cold and less pliable when you’re just sitting around and not doing anything physical. If you all of a sudden make them contract forcefully, they’re more likely to snap - just like stretching a cold rubber band.

How to Warm Up for a Run

Your old gym class warm up where you touch your toes a couple times and lean side to side with your arms overhead isn’t going to cut it. It has been known for too long now in the literature what is effective and what isn’t for us to plead ignorance and go on doing what we were taught as kids. If there’s a better way, then that’s what we should be doing…and there is.

Static stretching (holding a stretch at end range) is an outdated concept when it comes to warming up. Stretching a muscle and holding it in that position causes the muscle to relax, which is not something we want when we’re about to do physical activity. You’re essentially making the muscle lazy, and then asking it to produce force for you as soon as you start running.

It has actually been shown that the stiffer our tendons are going into a run, the more efficient we will be. This was measured through something called running economy (RE), which is basically how much energy a person needs to maintain a certain running speed. Stiffer, stronger tendons can store more energy (because they’re harder to stretch) than weak, loose tendons.

All this to say, we want things turned on and ready to move, and there’s no better way to prepare for movement than with…movement. Dynamic stretching is a far more effective method of warming up, and has been shown to immediately increase range of motion by 7-10% prior to activity. You also don’t get the drop in strength and power that you see with static stretching. 

Warming up can help reduce the risk of injury, and keep you doing the sport you love! (Image credit: Adobe Stock)

Sample Running Warm Up

Below you’ll find a selection of exercises from our programming here at Dynamic Runner. We have an extensive library that includes hundreds of follow along warm ups, mobility routines, and strength workouts that you can do to keep yourself running pain-free. If you want to join the community, click here to try us out for 7-days free!

This is a warm up that can be done in 5 minutes or less. Short warm ups are just as effective as longer warm ups as long as they’re specific to the activity that you’re doing. This is important to keep in mind for yourself as an athlete/coach for saving time, being more efficient with your training, and ensuring you stay consistent with your runs.

Kang Squat

Instructions:

1. Start in a standing position with your feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart, hands on your ears
2. Hinger at the hips, keeping the back flat and the core engaged, until your torso is almost parallel with the ground
3. From here, drop the hips down by bending the knees until you’re in a full squat
4. Reverse the movement, lifting the hips first until the legs are straight, then extending the hips to bring the torso back to the starting position
5. Repeat for 45-60 seconds

Kang squats are a great way to load the back, core, and lower body. When running, everything has to work together to keep you stable and tight as your bodyweight multiplies with every step and propulsion forward. This is a large movement that fires lots of muscles, raises your heart rate, and gets the blood flowing throughout the body.

Standing Crunch

Instructions:

1. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart or slightly wider, hands touching the sides of your head, elbows flared
2. Raise one knee up and twist the opposite elbow towards to do a standing crunching motion
3. Return back to the start, and repeat with the opposite leg and opposite arm
4. Repeat for 45-60 seconds

Running is a contralateral sport, meaning it involves the coordinated movement of limbs on opposite sides of the body (i.e. one arm goes forward with the other leg). This involves integrated activity between both hemispheres of the brain, and can feel clunky when you’ve been inactive. This standing crunch exercise helps you make the transition smoothly into your run.

Squat to Calf Raise

Instructions:

1. Standing with feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart, drop down into a full squat
2. Press yourself out of the squat, going immediately into a double legged calf raise
3. Go back into another squat
4. Repeat for 45-60 seconds

We gave the thighs a quick break but now we’re right back into another squat to ensure these big muscles are warm and ready. The added calf raise helps prepare the lower legs for the tremendous forces they will sustain while running, which can be upwards of 8x your body weight.

Run in Place

Instructions:

1. Standing with your arms by your sides as if you’re running, start to bound back and forth on the balls of your feet while remaining in place
2. Repeat for 45-60 seconds

Running is essentially a series of very small, low-intensity jumps. This type of ballistic activity can be a lot more stressful on the muscles than just contracting them up and down against your body weight or an external load. This in-place bounding specifically helps the calf muscles get ready for running by exposing them to a similar type of stimulus.

Diagonal Lunge

Instructions:

1. From a standing position, reach one leg behind the other and plant your foot
2. Lunge down into this position, bending both knees
3. Push yourself back up to standing, and repeat on the other side
4. Repeat for 45-60 seconds

The diagonal lunge or “curtsy” lunge is a great way to expose your knee joint to a lot of different angles that it might get into while running. Especially if you’re on trails or any sort of uneven terrain, one wrong step can send your knee out of alignment. If it’s not prepared to do so, it could result in injury. This exercise helps prepare your knees to be strong in different positions.

 Written by Eric Lister – Certified Personal Trainer & Corrective Exercise Specialist