The first thing you should do before your run and before your stretches is a dynamic warm up. It is never a good idea to stretch a cold muscle. Stretching a cold muscle can lead to tears in the muscle fibres. Dynamic warm-up exercises (dynamic stretching) involve active movements that take your body through ranges of motion that will better prepare you for activity. This gets the blood pumping and the oxygen flowing to your muscles. You should spend about 10 minutes with these exercises.
Before you start you can choose to spend about 3-5 minutes of foam rolling to target the calves, quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes. Make sure you roll the whole muscle while pausing at any tender points for up to 30 seconds.
Here are a few examples of dynamic exercises to get you started. All of these exercises should be pain free! Perform 10 to 15 repetitions of the following:
You are now ready for static stretching with your all muscles warmed up!
