The warm-up is a very simple concept. You do whatever you have do, to be 100% ready when the gun goes off.
That includes staying loose and warm, even if it means lengthy delays. Classic examples are Donovan Bailey’s 1996 100m victory in Atlanta after several false starts and protests. Jon Drummond’s “I did not move” 2003 World Championships also come to mind.
Here are the other 7 parts in the series on the Warm-Up:
- 3 Great Warm-up Exercises for Strength Training (by Joel Smith)
- Dynamic Warm-up, Static Stretching and Post-activation Potentiation [PODCAST]
- More on the Warm Up
- Should Sprinters Warm-Up Less, not More?
- Ian Jeffreys and the RAMP Warm Up
- Dynamic Warm Up vs. Static Stretching Controversy
- Valeri Borzov – An Hour Before the Start (A MUST READ!)
My 400 meters Magic Warm-up
I do a lot of 150’s in practice, so my “magic warm-up” to ensure all cylinders are firing is a near all out 150m 20 minutes before racing.
I also don’t worry about cooling off too fast.. I do enough 20x100m tempo runs which means I have a good blood vessel and capillary mesh network to ensure blood flow at the best and worst of times. Note how I don’t have to be a marathon runner to have a good “cardiovascular” or “aerobic” capacity.
We have so many theories out there, from dynamic warm-ups to post activation potentiation, so it’s always best to experiment in practice.
After all, you have at least 40 weeks a year to test out my theories.
All-Out 100m before the 100m?
Glenroy Gilbert will probably kill me for saying this, but I use the relay as a warm up for my own 100m or 400m! (I am referring to All-Comers meets where the first event is a 4x100m)
Running TWO races back-to-back, using the first race as a warm-up for the second race is common, and I wrote about why I like it in Running 100 Meters before your Big Race – Thoughts on Shawn Crawford back in 2009.
Improvement of 800m Running Performance with Prior High-Intensity Exercise
If you read my interview with Kevin Tyler on the Freelap Friday Five, you’ll recognize the names coach Steve Fudge and his brother Barry Fudge. (Steve would say, he’s not heavy, he’s my brother…)
Barry Fudge is the Head Physiologist for UKA, working with the endurance athletes year round and at altitude.
In a joint paper titled Improvement of 800-m Running Performance with Prior High-Intensity Exercise authored by Stephen Ingham, Barry Fudge, Jamie Pringle, and Andrew Jones (from the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2013, 8, 77-83), they state:
Prior high-intensity exercise increases the oxidative energy contribution to subsequent exercise and may enhance exercise tolerance. The potential impact of a high-intensity warm-up on competitive performance, however, has not been investigated. Purpose: To test the hypothesis that a high-intensity warm-up would speed VO2 kinetics and enhance 800-m running performance in well-trained athletes.
Conclusions: These data indicate that a sustained high-intensity warm-up enhances 800-m time-trial performance in trained athletes.
I’ll repeat that… a sustained high-intensity warm-up enhances 800 meter time-trial performance in trained athletes
Click here for that paper (PDF, 379kb). It’s a good read.
Jimson Lee
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Good stuff. I remember you writing that Kip Janvrin does that same 150M prior to the decathlon 400m. After reading that, I started doing a timed 100m on my 300m time trial days. Definitely saw an improvement in my pre-trial state of mind (with no apparent degradation in performance). Interesting to read that it might also prep me physiologically…though the study seems to point to improvements later in the 800m trials.
This is kind of what Clyde Hart does during the warm-up. They do a 30-60-90 at high intensity, followed by 10 minutes rest, before the actual workout. It’s like giving a adrenaline drink to the body. It also warns the body it will be running at high intensity levels. Remember, the body adapts to any situation. So whenever you do your actual running the body is prepared for that.