Warm-up

Main focus is to warm up and activate muscle, not excessive stretching.

A typical routine:

  1. Fast walk or jogging depending on the nature of the bout. If a regular training, 0.5-1 mile warmup is ok. If it is a racing with high intensity, may need more.

  2. Dynamic stretching

    • Toe walk / heel walk
    • Leg swing - back-forth, side.

  3. Drills

    • A-skip or walk
    • B-skip or walk
    • C skip (A + side)
    • Fast leg drill
    • High knees

Warm-up before race

For races shorter than full marathon, it is often beneficial to warm up sufficiently before the race, e..g, some slow jogging, or dynamic stretching (note, stretching may weaken muscles temporarily).

For full marathon or longer races, glycogen reserve is an important factor to consider. Many runners use the first mile as a warmup. To faster runners, some gentle warm up might be helpful while balancing the two is tricky.

Heavy warm-up

A new study 1 suggests that a heavy warm-up may improve performance for a heavy workout or race, where a 6-min heavy (but submaximal) intensity workout is followed by a 6-min low intensity one. Personally, I would guess that the duration of the 2nd low intensity workout or recovery is crucial. It needs to be long enough to allow sufficient recovery.

Cool-down

Mostly static stretch

  1. Calf
  2. Hamstring (e.g., downward dog)
  3. Quads
  4. Lounge

lounge

  1. IT-band specific

    • Trunk side bend

      trunk side bend

    • On a mat

      on a math

References

  1. [Heavy Intensity Priming Exercise Attenuates the Rate of Quadriceps Muscle Fatigue and Improves Time-to-Task Failure during Severe Intensity Cycling]https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/abstract/9900/heavy_intensity_priming_exercise_attenuates_the.838.aspx) ↩