Five of the best ways to warm up before a winter run
Physiotherapist Dave Peachey says that as colder weather sets in, dynamic stretching is crucial to avoid muscle damage during long-distance training
Warming up before any exercise is important, no matter what season we are in. But with marathon season approaching and many people training for longer runs in the colder weather, warming up perhaps takes on an added significance.
The aim of a warm-up is to help warm the muscle, increase circulation and activate muscle firing patterns. Dynamic stretching is a good way to achieve this.
As a general rule of thumb, I advise my patients who run at any level of participation to stick to dynamic stretching for their warm-up and static stretching for their cool down.
Static stretching elongates a muscle to its maximum length. For a cool down routine this is great as running repeatedly exerts a muscle through a limited scope of its full range. If we weren’t to stretch to the extremities of its length, then a shortening would develop.
Previous evidence has shown that static stretching can relax the muscles we want to activate, while decreasing their ability to store energy – the opposite effect of what we want to achieve pre-run.