Warm Up Stretching for Runners and Walkers

 

The first ten minutes of your workout should be your warm up. Start out slower on colder days to give your muscles a chance to slowly warm up. During this ten minutes where you ease from a walk to a brisk walk to a slow jog, do the following:

  1. March high for 10-20 steps. Do not come down hard. Come down easy warming up your quads.
  2. Shrug your shoulders up to your ears and let them drop. Do this slowly three or four times. Feel where your shoulders naturally fall and remember this position for running.
  3. Turn your head slowly from side to side as if you are looking over your shoulder.
  4. Swing your arms forward three times. Swing back three times. Shake out your arms and let them fall naturally into a 90 degree angle. Pay attention to the relaxed feeling of your arms hanging from your shoulders.
  5. Take inventory of your body. How does it feel? Are there any areas of tightness? If so move that area just enough to loosen it. Do NOT stop and stretch until you are completely warmed up.
  6. At this point you should be ready to move into a slightly faster walk or even a light jog if you’re running today.

 

Get into proper running form.

a.     Imagine your spine aligned in a straight line from your hiney to the top of your head.

b.    Tuck your chin just SLIGHTLY.

c.     Tilt your pelvis up. (To feel this put your thumbs on your pointy parts of your hip bones with your hands wrapping “backwards” around your pelvis and concentrate on moving the thumbs up slightly.)

d.    Arms loosely at side, hands relaxed, movement should always be forward…watch for arms crossing your body.

e.     Lean slightly forward at the ankles.

f.     Allow your position to carry your forward and “fall” into your stride.

g.    Smile! This is the most important part! This is supposed to be fun!