Just finished my first week post graduating and got to 5K for the first time... hurray! Took me 35 mins. Just in time for my 60th birthday this weekend!
I still had MJ for company, started running a bit before he told me to, and I was wondering if the 5 min warm up is recommended for all runners or more for new runners?
Professionals warm up so I would suggest that us amateurs should follow their lead.
Your risk of injury will be hugely increased if you do not warm up sufficiently.
If your muscles are cold you need to warm up before any kind of exercise. If you have just got up in the morning, for example, or have been sitting down for several hours at a desk, then it is prudent to get the blood flowing with some warmup exercises. It is relative to the degree of exercise though: if you are about to do something that is very vigorous or involves putting a lot of strain on joints (especially in cold weather) then you will need to warm up the muscles more. If you are going to be doing very mild exercise then your general activity levels should be fairly adequate. If, for example you have walked to the park to do your C25k walk/jog, there is not going to be a great deal of additional benefit from walking further.
Professionals do indeed warm up. Usually by doing a bit of jogging.
Funnily enough I discussed this with my sports therapy massage therapist yesterday. She runs too and we were chatting ref post grad runs. She advocated always having a good warm up walk but agreed with me that the aerobic exercises I do post run for around 10 mins would suffice long term for warm down.
I find the warm up walk goes really quickly. Its the warm down that I find a bit long winded...
Thank you for all these helpful replies... I will stick with the warm up walk then!
Congrats on getting to the magic 5k milestone!
Thank you! Slightly disbelieving my phone app but guess the technology doesn’t lie!
I find the warm up walk gets my mind into action too, I’ve also chosen a couple of favourite routes that take exactly 5 mins to walk to and back at the end 🙂 I spend most of the last 5 mins in self congratulation too!!
When do you stop the warm up and cool down walks?
Do you include the warm up walk when recording distance covered?
Is it always necessary to do the warm up, cool down walks?
5 minute warm up walk
5 min warm up walk?
