{"id":24583,"date":"2021-05-10T10:52:56","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T10:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skinscompression.com\/uk\/?p=24583"},"modified":"2024-04-02T14:46:10","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T13:46:10","slug":"sca-the-importance-of-a-good-warm-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skinscompression.com\/eu\/sca-the-importance-of-a-good-warm-up\/","title":{"rendered":"SCA: THE IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD WARM-UP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
SKINS Head Running Coach talks about the importance of warming up.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t
One of the most important aspects of any training is warming up. Most of us go from being sat down at a desk or from a sedentary position straight to exercise, and if you try going from being passive to working hard, your body won’t work to its full capacity. Plus, you’re more likely to injure yourself!<\/p>\n
Warming up is particularly important if you’re doing interval sessions as you need your muscles to be fully functioning to get the most out of yourself. The best way to do this is by using something called the RAMP<\/strong> protocol. RAMP stands for: Raise, Activate, Mobilise and Potentiate,<\/strong> all of which work together to improve your performance.<\/p>\n Raise:<\/strong> To start the warm-up process, we need a light aerobic activity to increase the heart rate and move blood around the body, mainly to the muscles. This increases the muscle temperature, which puts them in a better working condition when you start training.<\/p>\n Activate:<\/strong> By activating the muscles you use during running, the signals from your brain start firing to your muscles and get them ready to move. Jogging increases the muscles’ temperature, and then your activation drills switch the muscles on and get them ready to go. <\/p>\n Mobilisation:<\/strong> The third part of the warm-up is where you start to try and replicate the movements of how you run to increase the range of motion in the muscle. By doing this, you then improve the range of motion you can take with each stride helping with stride rate and how fluid you feel when running.<\/p>\n Potentiation:<\/strong> Finally, we want the muscles to be ready to hit the paces from the gun, which we do through potentiation. This is where you put the muscle under a small amount of stress, resulting in them being ready to fire at the desired intensity of your session. Furthermore, research has shown that strides like these before a session increase oxygen uptake and improve performance; therefore, helping you run faster for the same effort!<\/p>\n The above protocol has been shown to improve both racing and training performance whilst also reducing injury risk. A full warm-up protocol should be used before races and before hard training sessions such as intervals sessions or ‘threshold\/tempo runs. Carrying out a good warm-up will help reduce the ‘lag’ you feel in the first few reps when you’re trying to get used to running fast. This will help improve the quality of your race or session and hopefully help you get closer to your goals!<\/p>\n Before each easy run\/long run, you don’t need to go through the whole RAMP protocol as the session intensity is lower. However, it is still essential to get the body moving!<\/strong> We would recommend doing some mobilisation and activation work to get your body ready to go. Walking drills are good to do, as well as leg swings and some glute activation work. It’s also good to take the first couple of mins of your easy runs a bit slower to wake the legs up before settling into a nice rhythm. <\/p>\nRAMP PROTOCOL<\/h2>\n