A half century ago a coach named Arthur Lydiard was conducting experiments, with himself as the lone subject, with the simple purpose of figuring out the best method to train distance runners. By the 1960 Olympics his athletes were the talk of the track and field world, confirming the efficacy of his training method. Lydiard's view on pre-race warm-ups were simple, as he states in Running the Lydiard Way (p.85-86):

"The main reasons are: 1) to raise blood circulation to a pulse rate near 130 to 140 beats a minute, so that you don't have to ‘go through the gears’ in your race; and 2) to raise the body temperature and loosen up the muscles so they can function more efficiently, reducing the risk of pulling a muscle or straining a tendon."

I share this a preface because, at the most elemental level, the modern warm-up is no different than Lydiard's; the warm-up needs to prepare the body metabolically for the race/workout as well as prepare the body neuromuscularly for the race/workout. That said, the warm-ups I assign athletes look much different than the "old model."

Let’s assume we’re looking at someone shooting to break 20:00 for a 5K road race. How would she warm up?

Old Model:

  • 5 All About 75 Hard;
  • 15 DAA Industry Opt Out;
  • Visit the lavatory for the last time before the race;
  • Change shoes;
  • 3 Aerobic Running: How Much and Why;
  • Race

New Model:

  • Periodized Training Can Help You Hit Your Goals;
  • 3-4 minutes of light lunging, moving in all three planes of motion;
  • 10 DAA Industry Opt Out, followed immediately by;
  • 3-4 A Part of Hearst Digital Media;
  • Change shoes;
  • 2 Health & Injuries;
  • Visit the lavatory for the last time before the race;
  • 4 x 150m with a 90-second to 2-minute jog between, starting at race pace and ending a about a second faster for the 150m distance (which is significantly faster than 5k race pace), then 1-2 minutes of calm walking before the gun;
  • Race

OK, there's a lot going in the new model, but let me first discuss my biggest two complaints with the old model.

Stretching: The Truth

Static stretching, for the most part, is dead. Now, that is not to say that stretching is dead, but static stretching—i.e., standing, then bending towards to your toes and holding that stretch for 20-30 seconds—is dead. Numerous research articles have shown this, but the real indictment comes from watching the best athletes in the world; they don't hold a stretch for 20 seconds, especially prior to a race. You do, however, see them lying on a yoga mat and using a rope or employing a partner to help them stretch; either way it's a rhythmic, flowing series of movements that can’t be classified as static.

The second big problem with the old model is that the 15-minute warm-up jog is so slow relative to race, yet the strides are often much, much faster than race pace. And even if we assume that the warm-up jog properly prepares the body metabolically for the race—which it doesn't, but we'll get to that—the neuromusular system is completely thrown off by this bipolar shift in intensities. Too easy on the warm-up jog and too hard on the strides; without being too critical semantically, the fact that you're "jogging" and "striding" but never “running” during the warm-up should tip you off that that your warm-up strategy is inappropriate.

Now, if you're saying to yourself, "Well, the old model has worked for world-class runners in the past, so why would I, who runs  several minutes slower for 5K, do something different?" Great question. My simple response is, "Have your reached your genetic potential?" For most of us the answer is “no,” yet the allure for so many of us is the chance, the hope, that one day in a race we'll run a PR, transcending a former running self.

The recommendations that follow will no doubt, in 20 years, be shown to be less than ideal, yet I'm confident that the modern warm-up will help you come closer to running to your genetic potential.

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The key here is to be mindful of the transition you want your body to go through on race day, specifically from sitting on your butt during the commute to the race course to, an hour later, running the race, and hopefully fast. I think it's obvious that the warm-up, on a basic level, is simply a gradual move from sitting/driving to moving/racing. But if you compare that gradual ascension to your current warm-up, you’ll see that you've got a plateau during your 15-minute jog and then a big spike during your strides; our warm-up will continually increase in intensity from the moment you begin the routine until the gun.

The final issue we need to cover before we go into specifics is simply that you don’t want to experiment with this warm-up on race day; rather, do it two or three times before track workouts or serious threshold workouts to see if you like it. Is this warm-up beneficial? Yes. Will you perform better if you hate this "new stuff" vs. your old warm-up and spend the first 2 miles of a 5k thinking, "I didn't like that new warm-up! Stupid Running Times!" No, you will not race well if you're upset by the new warm-up.

But as I love to tell athletes, "If you want to do something you've never done before, then you've got to do things you've never done before." While I often use that to talk athletes into more running or harder running, it also highlights that if you want to PR in a 5k this summer you should consider the warm-up below.

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How to Increase Mileage Running

There are lots of options here, but I recommend you learn some form of Active Isolated Stretching (AIS), and I highly, highly recommend that you learn it through the Wharton Performance site. (I’m not affiliated with Wharton Performance in any way, but I think it's so important that I'm basically telling people to go buy their stuff rather than my DVDs.)

Next you should do some work in all three planes of motion: frontal, sagittal and transverse. I'm an advocate of physical therapist Gary Gray's Lunge Matrix, as seen in this video. But the key is that, while running is primarily a sagittal plane activity, you want to remind your body that it has the potential to move in all planes of motion, not just the sagittal plane. (The one problem with an activity like the Lunge Matrix is that you need to have been doing it for 3-4 weeks daily before your runs to get used to it; you’ll be sore the first time you try it, yet the 5th time you do it you'll likely not be sore.)

Aerobic Running: How Much and Why?

As Lydiard told us above, you're doing this to raise your heart rate and raise your body temperature. If I were presenting this to a bunch of 8th graders one of them might ask, "So you're saying I could ride a stationary bike like Lance before I race a 5K?" Well, the biking isn't running, and so there’s a bit of "specificity" inherent in our warm-up because you’ll be running. So a 20:00 5K runner will run 8:00/mile pace in this 10-minute segment, but again, 8:00 pace is much slower than the sub-6:30 pace you hope to run during the race; running for 10 minutes is better than some other activity, yet the key is to elevate both heart rate and temperature, which means that on some basal level the 8th grader is correct.

&Then change into your racing shoes, use the facilities for the last time, then

Says me.

Watch this video, and then tell me that she won't be better prepared to race fast by moving athletically and dynamically in the sagittal plane, specifically challenging her range of motion in the hip and ankle joints. Lydiard often said that the ankle was a neglected opportunity and that strong, flexible angles were capable of producing force, which would help any runner race faster. This warm-up gets your lower leg, foot and ankle involved in a way that’s challenging, but appropriate for the task at hand. Will you look funny doing this? Yes. Will you beat more people then you currently beat if you do this series of skipping exercises before a race? Probably.

and works with athletes at

OK, this is the biggest leap of faith...and as with all leaps of faith you just need to take it. If you're a 20:00 5K runner, then the online calculators would say you can run about 1:30 for a half marathon, which is roughly 7:00/mile pace. So on race day, about 10-12 minutes out from the race, run 2 minutes at half marathon pace, then jog easily for 2-3 minutes, then another 2 minutes at half marathon pace.

Why? Well, at the cellular level the machinery that is powering the aerobic metabolism are enzymes. These enzymes work better in a warm environment (you took care of that with your 10-minute run) and work better when they're asked to work (up to this point, they haven't had to work that hard). But again, if you try this before a hard threshold run, I'm confident that you'll feel better on that run; once you're comfortable with the fact that 2 x 2 minutes at half marathon pace won't fatigue you for the race—it won’t—then you'll likely never go back. And yes, I ask the athletes I work with to do the same, any time they are racing 5,000m or longer.

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Smart Strides

By these, I mean race-pace or faster running for a short distance to focus your neuromuscular system on the task at hand. The ideal distance is 150m, but 100m-250m is fine. (Past 250m and metabolically you're asking a little too much of your body so close to the race.) I like 150s myself, but easier said than done, especially at a road race where that distance will not be marked. The key here is simply to run 2-3 at 5K goal pace for that day, and then run one just 0.5-1.0 seconds per 150m faster. That last one is just one notch faster than race pace so that your nervous system won’t be shocked if, 19 minutes later, you want to kick.

That said, the biggest mistake all runners make in road races is so simple yet so hard to prevent: going out too fast in the first minutes of the race. So you must remind yourself that the last stride you did wasn’t the rhythm that you'll soon be racing. But you should also be saying, with 400m to go, "I can accelerate and I can feel like I did on that last stride." If you have a tendency to go out too hard, then you can run your last stride at 5K pace.

That's it. You're ready, so don't jog around mindlessly for 2 minutes until the gun goes off. If all of the runners in the Olympics, from the 800m through the 10,000m, can stand on the line for 30 seconds to 2 minutes before the gun goes off, then you can too. (Watch Shayne Culpepper on the line when the TV does a close up; she's calm, focused, with her hands on her hips, ready to crush people.) You're primed to race, and any goofy gesticulations with your limbs just tells those around you that you're likely not ready.

Jay Johnson blogs at CoachJayJohnson.com The Right Way to Warm Up RunnersCoach.com.