The Perfect 5-Minute Dynamic Warm-Up to Do Before Your Next Run

When you've got only so much time to squeeze a run into your day, it can feel like an internal battle to use some of those precious minutes for a warm-up.

But carving out some time to warm up before you hit the ground running is an important piece of the puzzle. Think of your warm-up as the pre-heat setting on your oven. It sets the scene for your body, so it won't come as a complete shock when you take off from zero to 100.

Here's why you should never skip a dynamic warm-up before a run and the perfect five-minute routine to try.

A dynamic warm-up involves movements that closely replicate the demands of the exercise you're about to do. Compared to static stretching, dynamic stretching better prepares muscle tissue for bearing load in specific motions, such as running. (Static stretching is meant to induce some change in muscle length and is best for post-workout recovery.)

When you're warming up before a run, your dynamic warm-up should include exercises like a walking high knee, which mimics the act of running more than standing still and hugging the knee to the chest for a few seconds at a time.

Whether you're a runner who hasn't yet incorporated a specific warm-up regimen or are looking to refresh your existing routine, consider introducing this dynamic warm-up to help you prepare for your next run.

Doing a dynamic warm-up before a run offers a bounty of benefits: injury risk management, improved blood flow and better recruitment of muscles, among others.

Perhaps the most important reason to warm up is that it can mitigate the risk of overuse injury. Because running is a high-impact sport dominated by the same repetitive movement, you're at a higher risk of developing overuse injuries compared to another sport with more varied motion.

In contrast to an acute injury, which is often related to a singular traumatic event, like an ankle sprain, overuse or chronic injuries develop gradually over time, and are often the result of poor load management and/or improper body mechanics while performing a given task.

Think you're safe from this? An October 2012 systematic review in Sports Medicine found that chronic, overuse injuries accounted for approximately 80 percent of running injuries.

Some common overuse injuries associated with running include patellofemoral pain syndrome, aka runner's knee (pain in the front of the knee or kneecap), and medial tibial stress syndrome, aka shin splints (pain along the shin bone), according to the Mayo Clinic.

Overuse injuries are not limited to bone and joint pain, however, and the classic muscle strain is also an injury risk to consider, particularly if you ramp up your runs too quickly.

An August 2010 review published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports suggests that some dynamic stretching before exercise may help reduce the incidence of muscle strains.

While the research connecting warm-ups and performance is mixed, there is some data that shows that a good dynamic warm-up may give you a little more pep in your step.

According to a January 2016 review in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, dynamic stretching showed greater performance benefits than static stretching and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF), a form of rehabilitative stretching.

And in a January 2012 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, performing just 1 to 2 sets of 14 reps of active dynamic stretches before a run enhanced sprint performance. But as the study points out, doing anything more than the recommended two sets of dynamic stretches can be detrimental.

While the physiological mechanism for how a dynamic warm-up affects performance is still being debated and isn't well-defined by current research, there are a variety of explanations for how it could work.

A February 2018 review in Sports Medicine highlights how dynamic stretching has a temperature and potentiation effect, which means that the muscle unit is literally "warmed" and primed for exercise. Plus, rehearsing specific movement patterns is believed to improve coordination and thus, performance.

How do you decide what to emphasize in a dynamic warm-up? Running is fundamentally a series of bounds — taking off from one leg and landing on the other. This means your glutes, quads and calf muscles work together in a coordinated extension from the hip and knee down to the ankle, translating into a powerful take off to propel you forward.

While a powerful takeoff is important for performance, the landing part of running is where there's room for error that can lead to injury. A safe landing requires some large leg muscles to be active while they lengthen. For example, when you are walking down a flight of stairs, your quads have to control your descent (and prevent you from tumbling down!).

Good knee alignment is another trait of a safe landing, largely controlled by the lateral hip muscles, like the gluteus medius. This muscle plays a big role in maintaining the knee's position over the foot. Without it, the knee will often cave inward, which can put increased, unnecessary stress on the knee joint and its supporting structures just as it's performing this crucial shock-absorption role.

With these thoughts in mind, the exercises listed here focus on first activating the glutes, quads and calves, then coordinating them all together to optimize the movements critical to good running mechanics.