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Best Pre Run Warm-Up for 2025

If I were to ask you, what does your pre-run activation? What does your pre-run warm up, look like? Would you feel guilty? Would you have an answer?

So I’m Dr Spencer Agnew. I’m a physical therapist and run coach, and I’ve worked with 1000s of runners. The most common response I get to that question is, “I don’t really do anything.” You put your shoes on, you hop out the door, and you head out for your run. So if that’s you, you’re normal. It’s okay. But today I want to help give you an idea of what you could do as that pre- run warm up and activation. To calm your nerves, I want to lead by saying, there isn’t one perfect routine.

There’s three things that I like to look at. The three boxes we want to check with our pre-run warm up are:

  1. It has to be for you
  2. It has to give you feedback
  3. It has to be consistent.

So let’s talk about all three of these and why they’re important.

It has to be for you

Your warm up needs to be specific to your needs. From a timing standpoint, some of us don’t have a lot of time to warm up before we run, right? We have busy schedules, we have family lives, we have work or other things going on, and we have to keep this short and sweet so that we can get into our run and get that taken care of. On the other side, we all have different limitations and impairments, right? Sometimes we have a nagging Achilles injury. Sometimes it’s our hip that always gives us trouble.

So for you, means that we need to target the areas that you need targeted. It’s not like a warm up routine for me is gonna be the best one for you or for your neighbor or for your running partner. You have to do what’s best for you as an individual. Your warm up needs to be individualized for you.

I’m going to give you a huge list here in a little bit of different things that you can do from the floor, standing, with a band, walking, and dynamic stuff. And you can pick from that whatever feels good for you. So the most beneficial thing to do here is follow along, try the movements, and see which ones feel good or bad or notice limitations that might need more attention. Then design your own program based off of the huge list of things that I give you.

It has to give you feedback

The other thing your warm up needs to do is give you feedback. Every day is not created equal. You’re not going to feel the same every day of the week. But if you can do this warm up routine, you might be able to feel things that will be helpful. For example you might think “That hip that’s giving me some trouble, today it actually feels pretty good. Maybe I can run a little faster. Maybe I don’t need as much of a warm up before this workout as sometimes I do. Maybe I’m feeling kind of creaky today, feeling a little bit irritated. Maybe I need to do some more banded exercises for my hip to get some more activation and blood flow before I head off from my run.” Or maybe the workout that you had planned today, you should shift through tomorrow. This warm up routine that you do, should give you feedback on where your body is today. It gives you feedback on how you’re feeling, how you’re recovering from the work that you’ve done in the past few days, and maybe what you should or shouldn’t do on a given day.

It needs to be consistent

And the last thing is, it needs to be consistent. The only thing that matters is doing things over and over and over again. The the progression that you have in your running is not done by what you do on one day. It’s how many days you can do that one thing. So your warm up routine doesn’t matter if you do it one day a week. We want to simplify it so you’re able to do it every single day as if it’s built into your run. This is part of your routine.

So to recap the three things you need. You need to do something that’s for you, that gives you feedback and that you can do consistently. There’s no perfect routine. This is the perfect routine for you. If you have questions on that, drop some comments. We can have a discussion and go into a little bit more detail on that in more videos.

For now, what we should do is show you a large array of different movements. I’m going to start on the floor, do a lot of hip and banded movements. I’m going to stand and do some different banded movements there. And then we’ll do some then we do some dynamic movements like walking, different skips and hops and things like that.

How you do these depends on where you are for your run. Sometimes, when I’m at home, I can do the floor stuff and the banded stuff. But if I’m on the road meeting a friend at a trail or something, I might not have brought my band with me.  I keep a band in my car, so I always have one, but maybe you forgot it. So you have to do some more of the other dynamic movement-based ones. Whatever is best for you following our criteria from above.

Floor 

Let’s do our floor routines first. So I have a band and a yoga mat set up.

  • First thing we’re going to do is some nice, easy bridges. You can do these with a band around your knees or without. But all we want to do is raise our hips up and down while trying to keep our back nice and flat. Push through our hips and come up and down. I raise my hands up so that I don’t support myself and I get more load through my core my hips. And you can do this double leg or single leg to make it more challenging. You can do this as a hold. Press and hold and go back down. But this is an easy way to start to get some work through the hamstring and the hips.
  • Next, we can do some hip circles.  I can keep my knee at a 90 degree angle and then circle forward and circle backwards. Generally, I would do five to 10, nice and slow. And just work through some of that hip mobility.
  • Next is a donkey kick. So same position. Keep that knee at a 90 degree angle and drive that heel up to the ceiling. Squeeze your hips, squeeze your glute and just go back and forth. You can put a band on here and do it with banded resistance. Maybe you start without. And make sure you do everything on both sides.
  • Another one you can do is a fire hydrant. Fire hydrant is like a donkey kick but instead of going back, you move your leg to the side. 
  • The last one a little bit more challenging. It’s going to be a side kick. So my leg is straight out. I’m either lifting up in the air, or forward and back. That can be a little bit more of an advanced one.

So if you like the floor routine, do your bridges as double leg and/or single leg. Do your hip circles forward and back, your fire hydrants to the side, your donkey kicks back up. And then you can do those leg lifts, forward and back. Those are a simple variety of floor routine exercises. See how those feel and what feels good on your hips. 

Standing

Next, we’ve got some banded standing exercises. So we’re going to do four movements see how they feel.

  • For the first one, put the band around your feet. Most of you have done this. It’s just a side step. I like having the band around the feet to get more activation within the hip. You want tension in the band and to stay nice and tall. Take very small steps to keep tension in the band the whole time. We don’t want a side to side movement. We want to stay nice and tall, taking small steps. And just going back and forth. I’ll generally go for time. Maybe 15 seconds, one way, 15 the other way. Maybe you’re talking with a friend and you’re just doing some of these back and forth as you’re catching up before your run.
  • Next one you can do from the same position is just a standing hip flexion. I just pull my leg up and put tension in the band, working that hip flexor and coming down. I like to just lift and hold for a few seconds, then come back down. Switch sides, lift, hold, and come back down.
  • We can also move the band around our ankles, stand on one foot, and we just reach to the side for a lateral toe tap. And then we can reach back at a diagonal and straight back. And sometimes people want to reach forward or do a little half moon. I usually do five in any of those directions and switch sides. It’s another hip exercise, but it’s single leg. So now we’re getting to that single leg loading, which is a running position. Running is just a series of single leg hops. So doing some single leg warm up activation is a good idea.
  • Now we’re going to do just some hip abductions. This is one that I do with my car. So I’ll hold on to the side of my car. I’ll be in this position, and I’ll just reach out to the side. Hold it, then slowly come back. It’s a harder balance movement, especially with a heavy band. So if you have to use fingertips on your car, that’s okay. But we’re just trying to reach out at a diagonal. Put the tip of the toe on your moving leg in line with the heel of your planted leg and then reach out to that side. That’ll give you your direction backwards to target the muscle group that we’re looking at.

So there’s an easy routine with a band. It’s four different standing movements. I keep a band in my car. I put one in my backpack that I take my running stuff in. Whatever is convenient for you is a good idea.

Dynamic

All right, so we did floor movements and standing movements. Now let’s do some dynamic movements.

  • One is going to be leg swings. So again, on a fence or on your car. We’re just swinging our leg from side to side. You’re not trying to hurt yourself. Just go through as much comfortable motion as you can. I’ll do about 10, one way and 10 the other. You also can go forward and back then flip around and go forward and back on the other side. So just some leg swings to loosen things up.
  • Then I’ll do a walking knee hug. I’ll grab my knee and pull up toward my chest. I normally take three steps into the next one, and I lift up on this back toe. So generally, I’m taking 10 feet or so to go through this one. If you’ve got a small space like this, you can just do one every step, that’s totally fine. 
  • Next we do what I call walking Frankensteins. So your opposite hand and opposite leg coming together. And you’re just alternating back and forth. This is not a test to see how high you can get your leg. We’re just trying to get things warmed up and get a little movement in. 
  • The next one is walking sweeps. So while standing, my leg goes forward, I hinge from my hips, keeping my back nice and flat. And I’ll sweep through and back. Take a few steps. Keep your leg straight and hinge from my hips with a straight back. Sweep through and back. This is not, trying to touch the ground or doing any bouncing. We’re trying to hinge and get a nice, gentle stretch. Try not to round from your back. It’s a big mistake I see a lot of people do. They’ll round and reach instead of staying upright and reach.
  • After that one, we can do our hip openers. We did some hip openers on the floor, but we can also do them standing.  You can do them going forward and also in reverse by walking backwards.

Those were all mobility movements. Now we can go into some strengthening movements as a warm up.

  • A single leg RDL is a wonderful activation warm up movement. We’ll just go up to a high knee. Reach your foot back and come back forward. Take a few steps, knee up, reach, come back forward and cycle through that.
  • A walking lunge with a twist is another one we can do. This allows us to to get into a position that puts load through the hip flexors and the quads. Twist over top of that knee and feel a stretch through that hip flexor on the side. One thing I should have mentioned for all of these, I do about 10 to 15 feet. So I’ll do them down my driveway or on my sidewalk, before I start my run. And again, we’ve gone through a lot. You don’t have to do all of these. I would test them all and see which ones work best for you.
  • After our lunge, we can do some heel and toe walking. So get up on your toes, just walking back and forth. Here you can rotate your toes in and toes out to get some calf activation. And then we can do it on our heels as well. Walking on your heels with your toes forward, in and out, working the shin. Those will work the lower leg. So you’ll see a theme here with the muscle strength pieces. We did a hamstring/hip strength. We did a quad/hip flexor strength. And now we’ve done lower legs. We’re just trying to touch on these different pieces to give you a variety of movements to think about. And to give you a chance to see what fits for you.
  • The last two are more jumping-based. One is a rebound calf raise. So if you’re holding it under your car standing on one leg bouncing up and down, or it can be two legs. We’re just bouncing up and down, getting a little bit of load through that calf and that Achilles tendon. That energy storage and release that we need through that tendon just by bouncing a little bit.
  • And the last jump I’ll do is a twist jump. Just jumping back and forth while twisting.

So that’s a pretty large routine that you could try. It gives you a variety of floor movements, some standing movements, some walking dynamic mobility, and strengthening things. And gives you a lot to pick from. But remember, there’s no perfect routine. The best routine is the one that’s for you, individualized to what you need. One that gives you feedback on how you’re doing that day or how you’re recovering from the days prior. And the one you can do consistently. So try to find a few movements that you feel like you can nail down and stay consistent with. Once you prove that you can stay consistent, maybe you add in some more. But it’s better to do less consistently, than to do too much and only do it every once in a while.

All right, if you have any questions, let us know. We’d love to give you more feedback and information. Otherwise, happy running. We’ll talk soon!

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