I don’t see a general rule of thumb for this anywhere I look. I’ve heard as much as 1 hour but that’s gotta be for pros looking to race. I’m just some unathletic dweeb looking to get better at the 100/200 and will be doing misty workouts for the next 2 months. Is 15-20 minutes of dynamic stretching and drills enough?
Thank you for any help
I would hardly call myself a sprinter, but I believe it best to err on the side of caution. I prefer a longer warmup. 20 minutes sounds like about the minimum I would need whereas I'd feel 'safer' at 30 minutes at my advanced age.
20-30 min.. tons of videos on Youtube on all the hops and skips and drills.. one of the things I like about going to a track meet. seeing how different groups spend their time warming up. distance runners going for very very slow shuffling jogs waaay before their event, sprinters doing every type of drill and skip and such. Some of the stuff the do is more athletic and difficult than what most people do as a workout.
At 19yo, following a year off training after HS, then summer & fall easy running, my coach had me work with the sprinters for about 6 weeks to introduce a decent speed reserve.
(Btw it worked, as I was then able to cruise thru 300m repeats @ 40 and 400m repeats @ 54, on an undersized unbanked indoor track while wearing thick, heavy stability trainers plus orthotics -- as a guy returning to running with a HS PR of 50.7. I could never have run those workouts 1.5 years earlier in HS.)
Our sprinters' warmup: 400m slow jog, stretch, 400m jog, 3 x 75m accelerations with increasing intensity. Then into the workout. Never any injuries in the group.
Looking back, I'd suggest adding a few 40m mobility drills before the accelerations.
As long as necessary. Every athlete is going to be a little different. Weather (heat specifically) can also play a role.
I agree with kmaclam, err on the side of caution. Honestly, if you have the time, I would move away from a fully defined warm up routine. By that I mean, for really intense workouts (tempo and things like that can have less thorough warmups) make sure your body is totally ready. Jogging, drills, progressive sprints as has been suggested above, but don't think in terms of a fixed number. Experiment and figure out what gets your body prepped for the real work. Also note that this can be very temperature dependent for sprints too
Thanks for the advice everyone, appreciate it.
My usual routine takes me 30 minutes to warm up and I feel ready by then for sure. How much time do you guys spend running on a workout day (including time spent getting ready, getting to wherever it is you're doing your workout, warming up, the workout itself, and getting back?)
I'm very fortunate to have a public track 5 minutes from where I live, so I should have no excuse or complaints about not having enough time to do a relatively longer warm up.
It depends (better, smarter athletes can correct me if I'm wrong). Extensive tempo workouts you could probably be out of there in less than an hour. A true high sprint workout would probably take closer to 1-2 hours, most of that spent warming up an resting between reps/sets (some sprinters will rest like15-30 minutes between reps for really intense stuff in warm weather)
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