Dynamic Warm Up "A's, B's and C's"

Hey Everyone, I am super excited to be speaking to the 5 km & 10km Running Group @ the New Balance Store in London Ontario tomorrow! The talk will be on how to do a dynamic warm up before your race or run and how to use a foam roller for injury prevention and self massage! Since most of you won't be at the talk I will include some information on why a dynamic warm up is best for injury prevention over static stretching. Okay so first of all what's "static"?

...static stretching just means a stretch in which you take the muscle to it's maximum length until you feel a pull and then  hold it there for anywhere between 10-30 secounds or longer.

Static stretching used to be the recommended method to prevent against injury in any sport, but now science tells us that "static" stretching before an event may actually increase your risk of injury because it changes your bodies ability to detect when it is being stretched beyond it's normal and safe range, and therefore decreases the way your body protects itself from muscle damage.

A "dynamic" warm up is one in which you move your body through safe and normal ranges of movements that typically simulate movements you do during your sport, increasing blood flow and warmth of the muscle, which prepares it for exercise. In running this normally starts with a 10-15 minute easy run or jog and then involves doing a number of drills called A's, B's and C's (which are different parts of a running stride), followed by strides (shorter 60-100m faster "sprints" which focus on running form, gradually increasing to race or goal workout pace).

 

For examples of A's B's and C's check the web for how to do these effectively.