Benefits of warming up
- Increases your heart rate and heart function
- Starts your joints moving
- Increases body temperature
- Makes your blood flow from your internal organs divert to your muscles which helps to carry away any waste products formed from running
- Improves synovical fluid flowing in your joints helping to absorb pressure and reduce friction
- Improves coordination
- Mentally prepares you for the upcoming exercise
- Prepares you for stretching
Advice on how to warm up effectively
- Start walking and then increase speed until doing a gentle jog – continue for few minutes
- Get other joints in the body moving to stop any tenseness of the rest of the body when running ie. Roll your ankles around, turn your body to left and right, turn neck to left and right, roll your shoulders around
- Hamstring swings – hold onto wall or back of chair – bend one knee up in front and then swing down and back behind you straightening leg – repeat 10 times each leg in relatively fast manner
- Walk backwards – this helps to get the glut muscles working which are important muscles for stabilisation when running and strong gluts help improve biomechanics in running therefore protecting the hips, knees and ankles
Stretching
- To prevent injury and reduce muscle soreness following your training gentle stretching is advised at end of the warm up and end of the run
- Aim to hold each stretch for 20-30 seconds
- Make sure move into the stretch slowly and do not bounce when stretching
- The following pages include some recommended stretches
Sports massage
- Having regular sports massage helps to boost performance, prevent injuries, improve mobility and flexibility, cure injuries, reduce recovery time from injuries and improve mood.
- Physiocomestoyou will be on site to provide sports massage on the day and we have sports massage therapists available to provide regular sports massage to you at home prior the marathon – please refer to www.physiocomestoyou.com for more details