Before you hit the road for a jogging exercise, you need to do some warm up and stretches, which are dynamic moves. The moves focus on elevating the heartbeat as well as warming up your muscles. A Port Coquitlam fitness trainer may be in the best position to show you, which exercises you can do as part of warm up before you begin your running exercises. There are a number of warm up exercises, which you can do, and they include;
- Ankle rotations: To do ankle rotations, place your feet close together and raise one foot in a way that it rests on ground with the ball of foot. Now, rotate the foot around to induce a maximum circular activity. You may want to do about 10 reps one direction before changing the direction and doing another 10 reps, then swap the foot.
- Knees rotations: When you do knee rotations, you may also want to perform some knee bends. Place the feet close together and the hands on knees then rotate about 10 times in one direction, change the other direction and do 10 times of rotations before you change to the opposite knee. To do the bends, place the feet at shoulder width apart then stand straight while holding hands in front and parallel with shoulder. Now bend down then back up. Do 10 reps but make sure you keep the back straight.
- Waist and spine rotation: For waist rotation, place the feet shoulder width then stand straight with the hands placed on hips. Now push the hips forward and as far as possible making sure you do not lose balance. Rotate around for about 10 times and change direction and do another 10 rotations. To rotate the spine, place the feet shoulder width while standing straight and holding arms horizontal and out to the sides. Keeping the upper body straight, begin to rotate to left and go as far as the upper body can reach. Hold to that position for about 1 second and then rotate to right. Repeat about 10 times.
You may not want to do static stretching prior to running as this has been associated with causing injuries. Other warm up exercise you can do are neck rotation, arms rotation, and matching.