Humans, The Animal Kingdom, and Individualized Treatment

We recently took our young son to the Maryland Zoo. Our little bambino loves animals, as most young children do, and we were excited for him to see his first real life lion, elephant, and giraffe.

The outing didn’t disappoint as most of the animals were out and about in beautiful spring weather. The highlight of the trip were two polar bears swimming laps and diving off the rocks.

Our son loved the outing and was happily making elephant and lion noises the rest of the day.

The trip had an unexpected outcome too as it triggered my physical therapy brain to start analyzing the movement of all these different animals.

It was amazing to see the different way that these animals move and adapt to their environment. From the long muscular necks of the giraffes to the incredibly nimble swimming polar bears, it got me thinking how the animals are all perfectly shaped to their place in the world.

I then started reflecting on our abilities as humans compared to our animal counterparts.

As humans, I must say that we are the most amazing movers out there. Our bodies have the ability to adapt to such a wide variety of tasks and environments that it is truly incredible.

Who else in the animal kingdom could take a swim in the morning, rock climb during the day and play a lacrosse game at night?…. No one, not a single animal, besides humans, have the ability to be so versatile in the activities that we do.

That versatility is what makes our abilities so amazing and what makes our day as physical therapists so interesting. We get to work with people who love all different types of activities.

From a physical therapy perspective every activity has its own unique demands on the body and should be met with a unique approach.

There are no one size fits all exercises or treatments for everyone out there. Every person and activity might require a uniquely different approach.

That is why our patients see us, for a uniquely individual approach, tailored for their body, their activities, and their goals.

We aren’t going to give a stock handout of exercises and tell you to go do them. We aren’t going to leave you alone to kick around on some machines. We aren’t going to show you an exercise, cut you loose to do it yourself and then go catch up on notes from earlier in the day.

We aren’t going to do any of that. We are going to develop a treatment plan based entirely on your goals and needs and be there one-on-one every step of the way to make sure you succeed.

This One's For The Mamas and Papas

Here’s a shout-out to all of those mamas and papas out there! This post is for those of us that have little ones.

We’ve all been there…. it’s early in the morning and you roll out of bed to get your crying child. You bend over to pick him up and BAM, you’re hit with a twinge of back pain.

Or you’re leaning over to put your squirmy child into the car seat in some awkward position and you wrench your neck.

It doesn’t feel great when these things happen, and lifting a small boulder all day on little sleep increases the risk of injury.

Here’s where we enter.

We’re here to give you some tips and tricks to help you care for your little tyke without destroying yourself in the process.

The first rule of thumb when lifting your child (or anything for that matter) is to bend down and get him as close to your center of mass as possible.

By bringing the weight close to your center of mass, you are automatically reducing how much weight you are lifting. When you hold the weight out away from you, you create a longer lever arm. In physics the longer lever arm causes the weight that you experience to be greater.

Once you’ve positioned your little bundle of fidgety weight close to your center of mass you want to tighten your core muscles before lifting. This will help keep your back in a solid position while you lift and allow for the right muscles to do the heavy lifting.

To do this think about drawing the stomach in and tightening the muscles that run along the length of the low back. The tighter you contract these muscles the more stable your back will become and the more protection you will offer it.

Now that you have your child close to your center of mass and your core engaged you are ready to lift! Use your big muscles like your glutes and quads to do the heavy lifting and keep your core engaged all the way through.

Especially consider these lifting principles if you are carrying your child in an infant carrier. Try not to hold the carrier low to one side of your body. If you are able to, hold the carrier with two hands in front of you, close to your body, with your core engaged.

Another option would be to simply make the task lighter by waiting to to put your child in the carrier until it’s in the car.

Lifting with good form can be a challenge, especially when sleep deprived. Getting into a habit of doing it right, especially when you’re feeling awake, will make it easier to carryover that good habit when your feeling tired or lazy.

Finally, on a different note, let’s not forget the mental side of things. It is imperative as a parent to also make time for yourself to do the things you love and that make you happy. We’ve found this helps us be better parents in that we have more energy, patience, and strength to care for our son!

Best Of Annapolis Winners For Physical Therapy & Dry Needling!

We are proud to announce GOfit Physical Therapy was named the best in Dry Needling and Physical Therapy in the What’s Up? Annapolis Magazine’s “Best Of Annapolis 2021” edition.

It hasn’t always been easy bucking the trend and going against the grain of the typical physical therapy model but every day we are encouraged and rewarded to have taken this path.

We started GOfit Physical Therapy because we believed in our hearts that physical therapy could be better and should be better.

We believe that physical therapists are the best professionals to provide holistic patient centered care.

We believe that by putting our patients first and giving them individualized care, time, and attention that we can make meaningful long-lasting changes and that these changes can occur faster and with less visits than any other physical therapy practice out there.

If you are looking to get your physical health back, your confidence back, or get back the ability to perform the activities that you love, we are the practice for you!

Thank you to all of our wonderful patients, friends, and family who have voted to make this happen. We are grateful for your support!

Stretching: Dynamic vs. Static

Who here has let stretching fall by the wayside?

It’s one extra thing to do during the day and if you barely have time for exercising, then the logical thing seems to cut out stretching, right?

Wrong!

Stretching helps keep our muscles at the appropriate length to Function and Move Optimally. Stretching helps to reduce pain with activity (1) and has also been shown in animal models to improve blood flow to muscles and even cause formation of new blood vessels (2).

That sounds like some pretty cool stuff, huh?

Before exercising, a dynamic warm-up that involves active stretching can help your muscles prepare for the activity that you are about to do.

Why could a dynamic warm up be important?

Think about when you are sprinting. Imagine that your your quad (the muscle on the front of your thigh) doesn’t have enough flexibility.

What happens?

You have to shorten your stride because your leg isn’t able to travel as far behind you with your knee bent.

In this case the muscle won’t be functioning optimally and you likely won’t perform at your peak ability.

How about after your workout or sport?

If you don’t cool down (doing a combination of dynamic and static stretching), your muscles can start to feel awfully tight and sore afterwards. If you keep avoiding stretching, overtime you’ll like end up with some pretty limited flexibility.

So what is dynamic or active stretching versus static stretching?

Dynamic or active stretching is moving through a range of motion repeatedly. You are not holding any one position for too long.

An example would be lying on your back and holding the back of your thigh with your hands, and then oscillating between bending and straightening your knee for an active hamstring stretch.

Static stretching involves holding a position for an extended period of time. An example for your hamstring would be lying on your back and holding your thigh with your hands, and then trying to straighten your knee as much as possible, holding it there for 30 seconds.

In order to make length changes within a muscle group, a static stretch must be held for at least 30 seconds. At this point in time, the collagen within the tissue deforms to the lengthened state. Anything before this time period and the tissue reverts back to its original length.

One way to picture this is looking at a rubber band. If you stretch the rubber band for 5 seconds, it recoils to its original length. But what happens if you leave it on a gallon sized bottle for months? The rubber band deforms and now stays at a larger size even when you take it off of the bottle.

So what is the best form of stretching, static or dynamic?

We would argue that a combination of both is best.

A dynamic warm-up can help bring blood flow to muscles and help elongate them to the range necessary for a workout or sport. We suggest 8-10 repetitions in each direction of motion.

A static stretch is good after exercising because there is already blood flow to the tissue and the tissues are in an elastic state. This allows you to stretch further and hold a position longer with more ease. Over time as you practice static stretching, you will notice gains in motion along with increased ease of movement during every day activities and exercise.

Do you have a favorite stretch you like? Let us know here!

References:

1. Tahran Ö, Yeşilyaprak SS. Effects of Modified Posterior Shoulder Stretching Exercises on Shoulder Mobility, Pain, and Dysfunction in Patients With Subacromial Impingement Syndrome. Sports Health. 2020 Mar/Apr;12(2):139-148. doi: 10.1177/1941738119900532. Epub 2020 Feb 4. PMID: 32017660; PMCID: PMC7040949.

2. Hotta K, Behnke BJ, Arjmandi B, Ghosh P, Chen B, Brooks R, Maraj JJ, Elam ML, Maher P, Kurien D, Churchill A, Sepulveda JL, Kabolowsky MB, Christou DD, Muller-Delp JM. Daily muscle stretching enhances blood flow, endothelial function, capillarity, vascular volume and connectivity in aged skeletal muscle. J Physiol. 2018 May 15;596(10):1903-1917. doi: 10.1113/JP275459. Epub 2018 Apr 5. PMID: 29623692; PMCID: PMC5978284.

Have An Ache In The Front Of Your Knee?

We use our legs all day to get us from point A to point B but we don’t really think about them unless we’re having some sort of issue.

Pain in the lower extremity can be quite a….. well, pain!

Today we are going to talk about the knee and patellofemoral pain.

First, a little knee anatomy review

The knee is comprised of several different joints including the tibiofemoral joint (joint between the two long bones in our leg), the patellofemoral joint (joint between the kneecap and femur), and the proximal tibiofibular joint (joint between the two long-ish bones in our lower leg).

Whoa, that’s a lot of joints that comprise the knee!

You can see now that several joints must work together for our knees to work properly and pain-free!

So let’s narrow it down for the purpose of the blog post and focus on a common source of knee pain.

Patellofemoral Pain

One common source of pain in the knee is patellofemoral pain often called patellofemoral pain syndrome.

With this condition, pain is often felt beneath or surrounding the patella (kneecap) and pain is most noticeable with sitting for prolonged periods, going down steps (usually more so than going up steps), squatting, running, and jumping.

So what are some things that contribute to this problem?

Typically pain occurs when the patella is not tracking properly along the femur. A slight shift of positioning could create a little friction and irritation between the undersurface of the patella and the femur.

The slightly altered tracking usually occurs as a result of a muscular imbalance either through weakness or a range of motion limitation. This could be caused directly from the knee or from further away, such as in the hip or ankle.

How can GOfit help?

Every person is unique and may have differing factors that have contributed to this pain.

So what do we look at to determine what may be contributing to this pain?

Well, we look a number of things. We look at the coordination of lower body movements and functional movement patterns (ie. we watch you walk, go up and down stairs, squat, run, etc…) to assess if there’s any undue stress placed on the knee.

We look at your posture. How is the knee positioned when you are standing?

We look at the mobility of all of the joints in the knee, aka how well do each of those joints in the knee glide in the directions that they are supposed to. Do they glide enough? Or a little too much?

… and then we move on to look at the mobility of the joints up and down the chain from the knee because they have an influence on how the knee is working!

We look at the strength and flexibility of the lower body musculature. Of course we also look at strength of the trunk musculature.

We assess for trigger points and areas that may be tender to touch such as the joint surface.

We rule out any areas that may be referring pain to the knee.

Out of all of these contributing factors is there one magic fix for this pain?

Of course not, you knew that answer!

Every person is unique which causes the factors above to be different for each person. Therefore there is not one basic stretch or exercise that “fits all.”

Truly to get to the bottom of your pain, you should see a physical therapist to tease out which factors are affecting you personally. This way you can have a tailored approach to reach your goal.

But, we can give you some helpful things to work on in the meantime:

1. Leg positioning: Work on keeping your knee in-line with your foot to keep it in a neutral position. This means avoiding letting your knee fall or rotate inwards. Try to focus on this especially with steps and squatting.

2. Hip Strengthening: Begin basic hip strengthening exercises such as bridges, hip abduction leg raises, side-steps with a band around your ankles

3. Lower Body Flexibility: Make sure the muscles in your lower body are as flexible as they need to be, especially your glutes and quads.

Let us know here what you have tried, what is working, what isn’t working, and if you have any questions.

Photobiomodulation & How It Can Help Your Recovery

Photobiomodulation: What Is It?

Photobiomodulation is a mouthful and handful when trying to type it in a blog post a bunch of times.

Even though it is a mouthful the word itself gives us some idea of what it is. Photo, meaning light, bio, meaning our body, and modulation, meaning to change or modulate.

Photobiomodulation is essentially using light to change the biological process of our cells.

In nature photo biology works on the principle that light affects particular cells called chromophores.

When energy from light hits these chromophores electrons within the cell jump from a low level of excitement to a high level of excitement. This high level of excitement is now potentially energy that the cell can use to do certain tasks.

A classic example of chromophores in action is the process of photosynthesis in plants.

Like plants, we also have chromophores in our bodies. Of particular interest are the chromophores found within the mitochondria of our cells.

Mitochondria have long been thought of as the “powerhouse” of the cell and responsible for creating the energy necessary for cellular activity.

When chromophores are activated within the mitochondria it can produce more energy for our cells to do work. We want our cells working and this can have some pretty positive effects on the human body.

How Can Photobiomodulation Help Recovery

There has been tons of research on photobiomodulation across many fields from neurology to regenerative medicine and endocrinology. The majority of the research has been positive and has shown a myriad of potential benefits from photobiomodulation.

Research suggests that when mitochondria in our body are exposed to red and near infrared light that they respond with an increase in cellular activity.

This increase in cellular activity has been shown to stimulate muscle and tendon healing, stimulate collagen growth and repair, prevent cellular death, reduce inflammation, and repair nerves.

How We Think Photobiomodulation Fits Into Our Practice

First and foremost we believe that finding the root cause of pain and dysfunction is paramount. If the root cause is not identified pain and dysfunction will continue.

The root cause may be from the painful area itself or from a more distant area. That’s why we evaluate and re-evaluate in such detailed manners.

Once the root cause has been identified and we have established a plan of care we see photobiomodulation as a tool to enhance the speed and effectiveness of recovery, if necessary.

GOfit Physical Therapy now offers treatment with a photobiomodulation device that emits both red and near infrared light. This means we are now able to improve patients’ recovery on the cellular level!

It may be incorporated into treatment sessions as long as it fits with a patient’s presentation and treatment plan.

References:

Hashmi JT, Huang YY, Osmani BZ, Sharma SK, Naeser MA, Hamblin MR. Role of low-level laser therapy in neurorehabilitation. PM R. 2010;2(12 Suppl 2):S292-S305. doi:10.1016/j.pmrj.2010.10.013

Huang YY, Gupta A, Vecchio D, et al. Transcranial low level laser (light) therapy for traumatic brain injury. J Biophotonics. 2012;5(11-12):827-837. doi:10.1002/jbio.201200077

Nascimento LDES, Nascimento KFES, Pessoa DR, Nicolau RA. Effects of Therapy with Light Emitting Diode (LED) in the Calcaneal Tendon Lesions of Rats: A Literature Review. ScientificWorldJournal. 2019;2019:6043019. Published 2019 Feb 3. doi:10.1155/2019/6043019

Heiskanen V, Hamblin MR. Photobiomodulation: lasers vs. light emitting diodes? [published correction appears in Photochem Photobiol Sci. 2018 Oct 31;18(1):259-259]. Photochem Photobiol Sci. 2018;17(8):1003-1017. doi:10.1039/c8pp90049c

Fighting Human Nature, aka Laziness

It may come as a relief to many reading this to learn that laziness is part of our human nature.

Whaaaaat? That can’t be true… But, it is.

It wasn’t so long ago that our ancestors were all roaming the wild looking for our next meal. A meal that wasn’t necessarily a given by any means.

Our hunter gather ancestors had no guarantee that they would have a lunch, a dinner, or a breakfast the next morning. Life was much more unpredictable.

This meant that our ancestors had to be very conservative in the energy they expended looking for food. That undoubtedly led us to evolve a natural laziness to conserve energy.

In hunter gather times this was a survival benefit. You didn’t want to expend all your energy searching for food if there wasn’t any to be found, if you were smart, you waited for a sure thing.

Nowadays laziness is not a survival benefit (no surprise there). Laziness in fact is quite the opposite.

In our modern world of convenience, comfort, and abundance laziness becomes sedentary and that leads to a higher number of comorbidities. This of course results in a much lower life expectancy.

Our world has changed much too fast for us to evolve the laziness out.

So what do we have to do?…. Fight human nature.

It’s not easy going against human nature.

Though we do have one trick up our sleeves that can help: habit formation.

Habit formation is one tool we have to fight laziness.

People that exercise routinely often feel like they “have to” exercise. As if there would be something missing from their life if they didn’t.

This is because exercise for them has become such a habit in their life that their world feels off without it.

Think about a coffee lover who one day couldn’t start their day with a nice hot cup o’ joe. I’m sure they would feel like their day was off.

How about a news junkie who couldn’t get their daily news fix. I’m sure they would feel pretty disconnected.

That is all because of habit, the more you do something, the more it becomes automatic and the more it becomes a part of you.

Good habits and unfortunately bad habits work the same way.

So how can you use habit formation to fight laziness and lead a healthier lifestyle?

Start small

Remember we want to make long term, lasting changes. Starting small and gradually progressing over time is a great way to ensure a habit sticks.

Start with 10 minutes of exercise a day, or every other day for the first week and add a couple minutes on each week after that.

This will give your body a chance to properly adapt to your new activity and won’t get you too overwhelmed with your new habit.

Do something that you like

If you have never really been interested in running but think that it’s the best way to get in shape, don’t do it! It’s a recipe for failure!

Pick an activity that you like.

If you like basketball, awesome, grab a ball and go shoot around for 10 minutes. Maybe after a couple months you can start to think about joining a league.

If you like dancing, awesome, cut a rug at home for 10 minutes. Maybe after a couple months you can look into dance meet ups.

There are so many options for exercise out there, find something that appeals to you. Don’t just do something because you think it will get you in shape.

The more you enjoy it, the easier it will be for your habit to become a part of your life.

Give it time

The old saying is that it takes 3 weeks to form a new habit. This may be true for some, but new research suggests that it may take anywhere between 2.5 months to 8.5 months for a habit to feel “automatic.”

Establishing Return To Sport Goals After Injury

Our practice treats a lot of athletes. From professional to high school athletes and plenty of weekend warriors.

No matter what level, every patient we see wants to know how quickly they can return to their sport.

This makes sense, everyone wants to return to the activities they love as quickly as possible.

It would seem too, that most people would even throw caution to the wind if that meant getting back to their sport quicker.

This, of course, is usually not the best practice and could lead to injury recurrence.

There may be people and circumstances where pushing faster to full return makes more sense, but for others, not so much.

Let’s take a look at the differences in return to sport philosophy between several different groups of athletes.

Weekend Warriors:

The term “weekend warrior” may be a disservice to the level of commitment and passion that some people have for their sport. There are a number of runners, rec soccer players, and rec lacrosse players that we see that have passion and commitment to their sport that rival a professional’s.

The term “weekend warrior” however serves the purpose to establish that these athletes are no longer participating in their sport for monetary or scholastic gain. Winning or competing is for pure pleasure at this point and their athletic pursuits would cause no impact on other aspects of their life should they cease.

In this case it is longevity that is the true goal, rather than short term success.

If I were to ask a weekend warrior if they had to choose between running next week’s marathon or being able to enjoy running injury free for another 10 years, which do you think they would chose?

I would bet that rationalism would outweigh instant gratification and that most people would rather do the activity they love for years to come, rather than risk injury pushing for a short term goal.

So for the weekend warrior group goal planning is easy.

Being able to participate in the activity that they love for a long period of time is of utmost importance and thus return to sport goals should be more conservative and progressed slowly over a long period of time.

It would be hard to argue against longevity at this phase of an athlete’s career.

High School Athletes:

In this group of athletes we start to see some gray areas emerge in return to sport planning.

Why the gray area? Because for some high school athletes there is more at stake.

Some high school athletes dream of playing their sport in college and often times there is a very short window to impress college recruiters.

If an athlete came to us with an injury and said they needed to have a good season to secure scholarship opportunities then we would have to start a conversation on the risks vs. benefits of a faster paced return to sport progression or even a modified participation.

The conversation would be an open one between the athlete, their family, and their PT to weigh the pros and cons of continuing to play or pushing for a quicker return.

Decisions get harder to make with more at stake and sometimes there isn’t a “right” answer for everybody.

Of course not all high school athletes want to play in college. If this were the case then the decision gets much easier. Health and longevity are easily prioritized with a slowly more gradual return to sport progression.

Professional Athletes:

Enter the gray zone….

At this level return to sport and goal planning can get very complicated. With money, contracts, and careers on the table, return to sport planning isn’t so cut and dry.

Getting injured mid season during a mediocre year with 3 years left on one’s contract would be a much different situation then getting injured in the conference finals in the final season of your contract. In the later, there may be a much stronger argument to attempt to play in one more game. In this case an athlete may decide the professional, financial, and career rewards are worth the risk of playing injured and it may be tough to argue against that.

Someone in the very same situation may decided that their health, no matter what the circumstance, is most important and it would also be hard to argue against that as well.

This is why return to sport and goal planning has to be specific for the athlete, their situation, and their goals.

Conclusion:

Like everything in life no two people or circumstances are the same. Return to sport and goal planning need to be made on a case by case basis, taking into consideration a number of individual factors and the goals of each athlete.

The Safest Way To Return to Running After An Injury

The 10% Rule: This is a simple and time tested rule that gives guidance on increasing weekly running mileage and returning to run after injury.

Lets break down this rule with a little more depth and context below:

Starting To Run For The First Time?

This is the bread and butter of the 10% rule and what the rule was originally intended for.

Research and experience has shown that those who increase their running mileage by no more than 10% a week are less likely to have a running related injury.

Sounds good, right?

The 10% rule gives us great guidance on how to advanced our training, but where would someone new to running even start?

General fitness levels and athletic background can all factor into a starting point. But, if we are speaking in generalities a smart starting point would be one that is very modest. An example of this might be running 1 mile 2-3 times per week and increasing each week using the 10% rule.

That means if you ran 1 mile 3 times a week during week 1, you would run 1.1 miles 3 times a week the second week. On the third week you would then run 1.2 miles 3 times a week.

When you do the math the 10% rule is a slow, sometimes painful slow, progression.

That however is the point, this allows for your body enough time to adapt to the new demands that are placed on it.

Eventually those small 10% increases over time could up add to be significant distances.

Recovering From An Injury?

The 10% rule is traditionally taught as a means to gradually increase running mileage, but this rule can be easily applied to those returning to run after an injury.

Again the 10% rule allows for the body to gradually adapt over time to the load that is being placed on it.

So we now have a safe progression, but what mileage would a runner start from after recovering from an injury?

The answer will be different for each person.

If you haven’t taken any time off from running then the answer would most likely be the greatest mileage you can run without symptoms. This means that you would be starting at mileage that your body is capable of handling.

From that point the goal would be to follow the 10% rule.

But what if you have taken time off from running?

Again, this answer becomes more complicated. One month off would be a lot different than a year off from running.

As an example: Lets say we have two identical runners (Runner A and Runner B) with the same history of marathon running and the same aspirations of running another marathon in the future.

If Runner A took one month off and Runner B took one year off, their individual starting points at a return to run program would be very different. Runner A’s starting point would be much closer to where they left off, maybe somewhere in the 70% range of the mileage they left off at. Runner B’s starting point would likely be less than 50% of the mileage they left off at a year ago.

Expanding On the 10% Rule:

The 10% rule, as we all know now, is generally taught for running mileage. However we can also expand this rule and use it for running pace as well as other sports.

Progressing ones tempo training or their speed workout should also follow this same rule. Obviously the 10% rule will only work up to a point, eventually one’s abilities will make it difficult from continuing to improve at a 10% rate, but if you are looking to pick up the pace of your temp run, a 10% increase may be the limit of what you consider as a weekly progression.

Running is one of the easiest activities to quantify as it is a relatively predictable sport. Other sports, particularly team sports like lacrosse, football, basketball, soccer, etc. are more difficult to quantify in terms of effort, as the play is less predictable.

That doesn’t mean however that one can’t use the tried and true 10% rule more subjectively when returning to a team sport. Though it may be hard to directly quantify, the rule can provide an athlete with general guidance on how to return to their sport, rather than just winging it or rushing back in.

In Conclusion

Understanding and using the 10% rule can be one of the best things you do as a runner or athlete returning from an injury.

With any activity you need to give your body time to adapt safely and the 10% rule does a good job at that.

To All Runners, Please Warm Up!!

Don’t you just love slipping on your shoes and running out the door?

It pretty freeing that all you need for a jog, is yourself and a pair of shoes.

… Not so fast!

There is one thing you should definitely do before you head out for that run, especially in this chilly winter weather.

What’s that you ask?

A dynamic warm-up!

Everything runs better when its warm: cars, planes, animals! People aren’t any different.

A warm-up is important for increasing body temperature and improving muscular pliability. It helps to coordinate our neuromuscular system to prepare us to run. This actually translates to improved running form.

It also helps to reduce injury because of increased activation of targeted muscle groups.

There are probably a number of injuries out there that could have been prevented if a proper warm up occurred.

So here are some easy warm-up exercises you can do before your jog.

1. Walking lunges: step forwards into a lunge position, then bring the back leg forwards to meet the front leg in standing. Do one pass (15 steps) this way, then do the next pass with trunk rotation. Step forwards on the right leg and while in a lunge position, rotate your trunk to the right. Then step forwards with the left and rotate do the left. Do one pass (15 steps) this way.

2. High knees: walk forwards and lift each leg up into a march position as you go forwards. Do one pass (15 steps) this way, then on the second pass add a small skip while your knee is raised.

3. Butt-kickers: walk forwards and with each step, lift your heel towards your bottom. Do one pass (15 steps) this way, then on the next pass do a faster-pace kick with a small jog.

4. Toe taps: Walk forwards and lift each leg straight in front of you as if you are kicking forwards. Reach the opposite arm as if you are trying to touch your toes. Do two passes (15 steps each) this way.

There you have it! It’s a pretty simple warm-up that isn’t time consuming and is effective in helping reduce risk of injury, improve muscle firing, and improve joint range of motion during a run.

If you aren’t in the habit of a dynamic warm-up before a run, do yourself a favor and get into that habit. Your body will thank you, as will your mileage time.

Do you already do a dynamic warm-up? Did you test this one out? Send us an e-mail here to let us know!