Risk of injury increases anytime you try new training techniques, ramp up the intensity of your training, or take on familiar, yet hard workouts on a weekly basis. To reduce the risk of injury and give your body a chance to perform its best, make sure to include more than just a slow warm up jog before you pick up the pace. By more, we mean include some dynamic warm up exercises to get the glutes, abdominals quads, hips flexors and hamstrings warmed up and ready for action in workouts such as hill training, track workout, strength exercises or even tempo runs.
A few of our favorite dynamic warmup exercises include high knees, butt kicks, side to side, karaoke and single leg swings. Watch our video for demonstrations of each or read our descriptions below. Either way, make sure to incorporate some sort of dynamic warm up before your high intensity workouts!
High Knees: Stand with your arms by your sides. Raise one knee up and forward, swing opposite arm. Bring this foot down and raise the other. Repeat movement coming forward. Continue for 30 seconds.
Butt Kicks: As you run, kick your heels to your butt. Goal is to kick your butt as many times as possible in 30 seconds. Keep back straight.
Side to Side: Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and up on your toes. Swing your arms up over your head opening up your abdominals and spine as you hop off one foot taking a wide step. Let your arms swing down and back up again as you continue to slide side to side for 30 seconds up to one minute. Repeat facing the opposite direction.
Karaoke: Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, and cross your right foot in front of your left foot keeping your hips and upper body straight and facing out. Continue to cross the opposite foot in front of the other. Continue for 30 seconds and then repeat facing the opposite direction for 30 seconds.
Straight Leg Swing: Stand with feet hip-width apart. Swing one leg straight in front of you and then swing back behind you keeping back straight and pelvic square. Repeat for 30 seconds to one minute on each side. Modified: Find something on the same side as the leg you are swing to hold on to for balance.
