Today’s Move With Us takes us through a great warm up to do before you go for a run. Quite often we neglect warming up and forget how important it is to activate our muscles and mobilise our bodies before we exercise.

This 5 minute warm up targets the major muscle groups that we need to fire to run at our best, as well as mobilising through our back and hips so that we’re free to move!

Try to incorporate this warm up before your next run and see how you feel! And don’t forget to have a look at our previous Move With Us through an after run stretch for afterwards too.

Calf Raises

• Our calf muscles are very important in dealing with the load running places through our joints

• Standing with your legs hip distance apart, lift your heels off the ground into a calf raise

• Feeling the squeeze through the back of your lower legs, slowly and controlled lower your heels back down to the ground

• Try to keep your heels in line with your feet and not rotate inwards or outwards

• Repeat 8-12 times

Lunge with Knee Drive

• Standing with your knees hip distance apart, step back with one leg into a lunge trying to keep your legs hip distance apart

• Drop down into a lunge, trying to achieve a 90 degree bend at both knees

• Trying to use the glute muscles of the front leg, straighten the front leg to return to standing while driving the back leg through to stop at 90 degrees of hip flexion

• This is great at mimicking the running action and making sure your glutes are firing

• Repeat 4 times and then do the same on the other leg

Hip Openers

• Standing with your feet hip distance apart

• Lift and bend one leg to hip height, while opening and moving it out to the side

• Touch your foot down on the ground with your hip abducted and externally rotated

• Circle back to the centre and touch your foot down in front of you

• Repeat 4 times and then do the same on the other side

Thoracic Rotations

• Our aim is to encourage more movement through your mid to upper back

• Cross your arms across your chest and gently twist to one side as far as is comfortable

• Return back to the center and then twist around to the other side

• Repeat slowly and continuously 5 times each side or as many as you feel are needed 

Standing Book Openers

• Our aim is to open up through your chest and help with shoulder and thoracic mobility

• While seated bring both arms out in front of you with your palms facing each other

• Run your right hand along the inside of your left arm towards your chest while rotating your upper body towards the right

• Extend your arm fully and then bring the arm back to the start position

• Alternate sides and repeat with the left arm

• Remember to keep both shoulders relaxed and down

• Make sure your hips stay facing forward and that the rotation is coming from your upper back

• Repeat slowly and continuously 5 times on each side or more if desired

We hope you found this helpful! Feel free to repeat this series multiple times through out the week and keep Moving With Us. If you have any questions or need any advice on any of these exercises, please don't hesitate to reach out and chat to us.

Remember that you shouldn’t feel pain during any of these exercises. If they are painful for you, consider avoiding that exercise or decreasing the intensity. We are always here to help if needed.

If you’re after some more advice or are in need of some hands on help, we’d love to see you at Collective Motion! Collective Motion offers Osteopathy, Myotherapy, Dietetics and Pilates and is conveniently located to service our Bentleigh community as well as its surrounding suburbs including Bentleigh East, McKinnon, Ormond, Glenhuntly, Murrumbeena, Carnegie, Oakleigh, Gardenvale, Brighton East and Hampton East. Click below to book an appointment and let us help you get moving again.