How should we warm up?
Before starting a fairly intense workout, we need to prepare our body for the effort with a warm-up.
For runners, this warm-up will start with an easy jog of several minutes, usually between 10 and 20 minutes, simply to raise the temperature of the different muscle groups and loosen up the joints in a more dynamic way.
Once that easy jog is done, it's followed by a series of exercises that we'll call “joint mobility” or “dynamic stretching,” which aim to gradually take the body's main muscle chains through their full range of motion, focusing above all on the lower and/or upper body depending on the sport we do.
These exercises can be done in place or on the move, continuously, with the difficulty building progressively from the simplest to the most complex in terms of range of motion.
A few progressive strides can round off our warm-up, leaving us ready to start the main part of our workout. Often, too, after the warm-up and before the main part, more complex exercises such as running technique drills can be done; while not part of the warm-up itself, they finish getting the body into an optimal state to tackle the main part of the workout.
You can see a simple progression of joint mobility exercises in the video at this link.
Andreu Novakosky, nationally certified athletics coach.