If you're a runner, do you have any routines that you do before you start
running or do you just get out there and just go for a little bit of a run?
Today we're going to run through just a few really simple easy dynamic stretches you
can do. You can do them in the first five to ten minutes of your run and that
should get you moving and warmed up. They help just target the different areas of
the body that you'll be using as you run.
It's Claire I'm a physiotherapist from PhysioFit Health.
If you just get up and go out for a run it's no bad thing, the body can just warm up with a
little bit of time, but it's an idea to just work on the different areas of the
body get them warmed up before you go out for the real main chunk of the run
that you want to do. The research is suggesting dynamic stretches are better
for before an exercise that you do, as it gets the body warmed up and you can
target the different areas that you're going to use during the exercise.
You've got the more traditional static stretches which is where you just put
the area on a little bit of hold, so say it was your fingers, you're just going to
put your fingers on a little bit of stretch and you hold it
- so that's your static stretch. Whereas your dynamic one is where you're just
getting a little bit more movement involved in it.
Now, the caution I'd just put on doing the dynamic stretches is just slowly and
gently ease into things because you just don't know how your body's feeling, it
might need to warm up a little bit and so you might not be able to move as much
as you can when you're warmed up, so yeah, just go a little bit easy to begin with
before you go into your full range.
So when you're wanting to decide what
stretches to do when you're running just think from head to toe what are the
main areas that you're going to use? So upper body - you do get a little bit
of rotation so you can do rotation exercises.
You're obviously going to need
your legs, so you want to be warming up your hips, you want to warm up the front
of your thigh, the back of your thigh, your knees and your calves and your ankles.
Here's the demonstration of some of the
dynamic stretches you can do
Upper-body rotations are very easy to do, you can do it in standing and just
wanting to rotate the body round to the right and to the left.
If you want to, you can walk as you are rotating your upper back to the right and to the left.
High knees are exactly how they sound and you are wanting to ideally get your
knee in line with your hip
Butt kicks are where you're trying to get your knee to bend as much as possible and
this will stretch the front of your thigh so it will stretch the quads.
Keeping the leg straight you're trying to kick the leg up as high as you can do
and what that will do is stretch the back of the thigh in particular and it can do a
little bit of the calf
Moving on to the calves, all you need to be doing is doing a few jumps or hops and
that should warm the calves up.
So there you have it, some easy stretches to try
before you next run try it out see how you do. Remember to listen to your body
so just listen to your body, if you're getting any aches and pains or niggles,
don't push yourself too much. If you think you're fatigued or you think
things are getting too sore.
If you want to
find out more exercises you can do,
so if you want to target your calves, which can often be overlooked in runners,
people tend to focus more on hips, glutes, quads and hamstrings, then you can watch
our next video, we just talk you through some really easy
calf strengthening exercises you can do.
Let me know if you have any questions
and forward this video on and share it with anybody that you think could do with a
little bit of a routine before they run or just share the dynamic
stretches with them.