The question is: what should you do to prepare for a run? Do you just head straight out the door and go? Or should you do some activity beforehand?
SO, SHOULD YOU ACTIVATE YOUR MUSCLES BEFORE A RUN??
…….YES!!
First off, the exercises in the video below, are only ACTIVATIONS. In other words, before your run you’re not trying to completely ‘burn’ those muscles out. So, you are not going to be doing high volume here (loads of sets and reps).
We just want to ‘light them up’. (This is a mistake I often see – people doing set after set of these type of exercises). You don’t want to completely fatigue these muscles prior to your run for obvious reasons.
However, most of us don’t realise how shut down our glutes are from hours of sitting every day. Ensuring your hips are active prior to running means you’ll get more force, your hips are less likely to be overworked and you’ll almost automatically run faster.
Your glutes are important for running! First, they contribute to the total amount of force you are putting into the ground with each step. The glutes are essential for hip extension, too. This is the part of your stride where your leg passes behind you.
Also, your lateral glute muscles (Glute Medius) at the top of your hip are extremely important for single leg stance and stabilising your hips.
But these 4 x exercises will not just target your glutes but will activate your whole body:
1 – FROG STRETCH (great for opening your hips, stretching your hamstrings and there is a rotation in there too!).
2 – LOOP BAND FWD AND SIDE STEPS (for your glutes!!). You just need a mini band loop for this one.
3 – SPRINTER STEP (these will warm up your legs nicely in the sagittal plane running movement pattern).
4 – BUM KICKERS (do this one last as it’s great for encouraging good ROM and is a plyometric exercise to potentiate and excite your running muscles!) about 30 seconds will be good for these. They are also good for raising your heart rate!
I hope you enjoy these. If you have any questions or need any help me just contact me.
