TRAINING
Many runners skip it, but prepping your body properly before a race has many benefits
IN A TIME-POOR WORLD, we often cram our running around lots of other things. As a result, we strip away some of the most important elements of physical preparation, and one of the most obvious areas is the warm-up and cool-down. Here, I’ll explain how they can enhance your performance.
• The warm-up – what’s the point?
Do you have a warm-up that’s well planned and repeatable? Or is it, at best, an afterthought, or at worst, skipped altogether? Having a clear understanding of what a good warm-up can do for you might help persuade you that it’s worth devoting time to. A proper warm-up can help: Increase body temperature: As your body temperature and mobility increases, synovial fluid is released to help your joints move more freely. There is increased enzyme activity in your muscles, which can improve their ability to contract, and at the same time, your heart rate will rise, which will help improve blood flow.
Improve flexibility: You can increase the range of movement around your joints, increase the reactivity and stiffness of your tendons and also increase the force and coordination your muscles can produce, allowing you to run better and faster. Raise mental readiness: An effective, repeatable warm-up may also involve psychological techniques to enhance performance. This includes positive self-talk, visualisation and mental rehearsals. A good warm-up could also help to temporarily increase testosterone levels. Boost performance: Combined, these factors suggest that warming up plays an important role in your performance immediately before you train or complete a race. The bigger picture: Do you also struggle to carry out regular strength work? A well-structured warm-up provides a regular opportunity to add to your conditioning with drills, body-weight exercises, strides and banded exercises, which all improve your running over the longer term.
• Going the distance
All distances require different kinds of warm-ups. With marathons, energy preservation is a primary concern, so care is needed not to overdo it. Just a few minutes of light jogging and some dynamic stretching is enough. The warm-up is as much mental as physical: it’s about making you feel relaxed. For shorter races, we want to get out of the blocks strongly. Oxygen uptake kinetics refers to the time it takes for your body to reach its peak oxygen uptake during exercise. A good warm-up at the right intensity can improve oxygen uptake by increasing blood flow, muscle temperature and heart rate. This helps the body to transport oxygen more efficiently to your muscles. I often see runners prepping for a 5K or interval session with a few minutes of easy jogging and some strides, but then struggling to ease i
