An eight-minute warm-up for a 10k

Most of the runners who come through the gait lab warm up by standing still and pulling on a calf. It feels like the right thing to do and it does almost nothing. A warm-up has one job, to get the muscles and tendons you are about to load doing that work at a lower intensity first, and standing still does not do it.

Minutes one to three

Walk briskly, then jog easily, slower than you think you should. The point is blood flow and temperature, not pace. If you are talking in full sentences, that is right.

Minutes four to six

Three drills, twenty metres each, out and back. Walking lunges with a tall chest. High knees, light and quick, not high and slow. Then heel flicks, kicking your own backside. These take the hips, knees and ankles through the range you are about to use them in, with load on.

Minutes seven and eight

Four strides. Fifteen seconds of building to about eighty per cent of your fastest, walk back, repeat. This is the part most people skip and the part that matters most for the calves and Achilles, because it is the first time all day they will have been asked to do what the race is about to ask of them.

Then start. Save the stretching for after, when it is fine, and pleasant, and does no harm.

If a particular spot complains every time you run, that is not a warm-up problem and no drill will fix it. Book a running assessment with Daniel and we will watch you run before anyone guesses.