"Warming up" and "Drills", are awaste of time and energy

Listen and Learn.......

Many years ago when doing long morning runs at 5am in New England, I learned many lessons. I noticed that @ 5-20 degrees my hands would be very cold, even with gloves. This coldness diminished drastically after a period of time. I started timing it, 9:43, 9:45. 9:41, 9:47, ...... I figured I needed about 10:00 to warm-up, I also was involved in some research that showed that certain glycolytic enzymes require temps of 99-100 degrees. Perhaps it took my body 10 minutes to get there. In addition, the CNS recognizes a deviation from the norm. You need to tell it what it can expect soon, ie when the gun goes off. So a few hard strides does that. Bham! Warm-up complete, with purpose. Everyone's body is different. Find your own warm-up. But, I am fairly certain it's not 5 miles at 6:30 pace!

no diff wrote:

After you try a few races with essentially no warm-up you'll be injured.

This is why Americans suck and just jog 4 hour marathons. They think they know all but drills are essential to warming up a skips b skips butt kicks high knees hip exercises lunges dynamic stretches. If you don't do some of this stuff on ur hard days ur probably one of those people that says oh it takes me 3 miles to warm....um no u just don't know how to warm up so keep jogging and running ur 4 hour marathons

People that hold this opinion always seem to be the ones that never struggled with long term injuries so they don't see the difference that all the little things make.

Fixed it for you wrote:

no diff wrote:

After you try a few races with essentially no warm-up you'll be injured.

Never happens. We're not that delicate.

Warmup drills are just things that coaches come up with so that they feel good about themselves. In reality, the warmup drills are useless and warming up is much simpler than many coaches would want you to believe.

Each year the weird and wonderful movements become more and more complex as coaches strive to stay relevant. But running is still the same movement that it has always been.

reinvented wheels wrote:

Each year the weird and wonderful movements become more and more complex as coaches strive to stay relevant. But running is still the same movement that it has always been.

I'm glad to see that finally some people have come around to the idea that A skip and B skip are useless and don't teach anything about proper form and certainly do nothing before a race.

To say that warming up is a waste of time however would be an exaggeration. I feel as tho you need about 10 minutes for a jog and some strides. No stretching, no skips, that just wastes energy and can be detrimental to performance.

form guy wrote:

reinvented wheels wrote:

Each year the weird and wonderful movements become more and more complex as coaches strive to stay relevant. But running is still the same movement that it has always been.

I'm glad to see that finally some people have come around to the idea that A skip and B skip are useless and don't teach anything about proper form and certainly do nothing before a race.

To say that warming up is a waste of time however would be an exaggeration. I feel as tho you need about 10 minutes for a jog and some strides. No stretching, no skips, that just wastes energy and can be detrimental to performance.

I disagree about skips especially. They can help to feel and get some "pop" back into your legs before a race. Before a race from 400-mile I always do skips, they just help get my legs ready for running fast.

10 minute activation jog upon waking up.

20 minutes pre-race run, 6 - 8 striders.

Light active stretching.

Race.

Drills are a waste of time. A proper warm-up is short and to the point; a good example is one mile of 100m run/100m walk with the runs at race pace. Or 800m starting easy and finishing at race pace. Nothing more is required.

I warm up by watching this video for 10 minutes, or until I'm "ready to go."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdCMegemtrc

If a warm-up is so important why are ice vests and cooling practiced?

If a runner is at a high level of fitness warming up probably isn't needed to run fast. All that mileage and training has the body in the ready state you just need the warm up to wake up the mind and energize the senses for racing. However, warming up is a good practice to make sure you are on all cylinders before hitting the gas. Sort of like a preflight check list a pilot does before flying.

However, if the runner is at a lower level of fitness, warming up could be a waste of energy, but it is needed to avoid injury to muscles that aren't trained for high levels of exertion.

For me, an hour before the race I do 20 min of easy jogging with some cruise pace pick ups to shake out any stiffness. I follow that with some light stretching and range of motion drills and a couple of striders right before the race. Again, I do this just to loosen up and wake up the senses as well as a preflight check to make sure all is good before I take off.

Larry83 wrote:

Warmup drills are just things that coaches come up with so that they feel good about themselves. In reality, the warmup drills are useless and warming up is much simpler than many coaches would want you to believe.

Bingo.

reinvented wheels wrote:

Each year the weird and wonderful movements become more and more complex as coaches strive to stay relevant. But running is still the same movement that it has always been.

You're right. But I would never call fake, pseudo-sophisticated things "wonderful."

To all the proponents, how much science behind drills?

^ This.

We have come full circle. First no one liked stretching and said it was a waste of time. Now kids don't like warming up and so it's a waste of time.

To the OP,

You kids keep skipping all these things and the kids I coach will keep beating you.

And when you make statements like this please post at least some depth of your argument. Maybe even put in 5 min of research before vomiting words.

The Animal Within wrote:

^ This.

We have come full circle. First no one liked stretching and said it was a waste of time. Now kids don't like warming up and so it's a waste of time.

To the OP,

You kids keep skipping all these things and the kids I coach will keep beating you.

And when you make statements like this please post at least some depth of your argument. Maybe even put in 5 min of research before vomiting words.

I think I ran a race against your kids last weekend. They ran round for 30 minutes and then stretched for 15 minutes before launching into a series of cirque de soleil type drills.

I rested quietly in the shade sipping a small coffee.

When the gun went off they majestically sprinted off into the sunrise while I eased into race pace over the first half km.

They then chugged to a slow pace while I kept going and beat them by over 10 minutes.

But they sure looked good at the start.

Beating a bunch of kids. Congratulations!