3 mistakes runners make when warming up, that could easily reduce over 79% of injuries

3 mistakes runners make when warming up that could reduce over 79% of injuries

79% is a weird number right. But research has shown that this is potentially the amount of runners that are injured every year as a result of..running. I always take these figures with a grain of salt, but if you run, and know others that run, you can be sure that one of you has been injured in the last year.

And it sucks.

There a lot of things that runners do wrong, and having trained some of the worlds best, I can tell you, that if I went down the road of listing all of the mistakes, you would still be reading this 2 weeks later.

Ain't nobody got time for that.

Here we’ll look some simple ways you can integrate some fixes into your warm up, and get rid of the common mistakes being made prior to a run.

Firstly, why do we warm up at all?

When it comes to running there are 3 factors that we need to address in our warm up;

-Increase aerobic demand
-Prime the nervous system for work about to be done
-Sort your shit out

Let's look at the common mistakes and how to fix them

Mistake 1. Not priming your engine

The first one isn’t really a mistake that I want to address to much. If you aren’t doing it then you probably don’t care about the rest, as you hate running well and haven’t had your injury yet (it’s coming).

Getting blood flowing is important for up regulating enzymes and allowing the muscle to receive and use oxygen better. Leaving out an aerobic warm up is why the first part if a run can feel so hard, and not doing it can also see you tap hard into glucose from the get go and stay there, hitting the wall way earlier than you should.

This one is easy. Just do some stuff for 5-10 minutes to get cylinders firing.

Mistake 2. Not firing up the nervous system

Priming the nervous system has been shown to increase explosiveness in a variety of studies in different sports and applications. However, this principle gets thrown around to mean anything that increases the ability, rate and intensity of muscle contractions. Most of the research has focused on pre-loading the muscle in order to increase its ability to respond, with the consensus being that the load that is applied to the muscle needs to be relative to the activity that is about to be commenced (joint angles etc). That is, do similar stuff to what you are about to do.

If working on speed and short efforts, some fairly heavy loads being lifted in single leg positions such as step ups could also be a good start according to research. A simpler, and more general approach, may be to run some drills that work on ideal joint angles and techniques that you feel you would like to improve on for your running, the emphasis being on putting your body in the places it usually doesn't want to go, with some level of effort in the muscle required.

Mistake 3. Not sorting your shit out.

Here’s where things get confusing for most people. We are told not to stretch, do dynamic stretching, etc etc.

In sorting out your shit, you need to work on whatever we can apply in order to get things working that aren’t. For example, I mentioned above, working on techniques or drills are a good inclusion for neural priming. Drills don’t work unless the muscles that are meant to be involved are doing their thing. Very often we see coaches incorporating drills in order to fix problems that are structural, wondering why the athlete fails to improve or do the drills properly. If the body can’t understand what you want it to do, then it won’t make any difference.

And this applies to your running as well.

Let’s say for example that one hip lacks movement when you run. Somewhere, something will compensate for this movement, causing pain and poor technique.
In my Not Really Yoga program, we would address this through ensuring the joint moves well, releasing the muscles that inhibit good joint movement, then activating the muscles that support the improved range of motion. Integrating this into patterns that relate to running allow us to create lasting change, as well as creating the opportunity to address the components of point 2 above.

Include the 3 points here to make sure that you don't find yourself worse of for going for a run, as well a ensuring you get the most out of your time training. Would you like to see a video of my warm up based on these components?

Click here to get the session, plus more FREE video training on how the system I use to keep my runners free from injury and performing at their best.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FREE WARM UP VIDEO