Improve your movement patterns and activate the right muscles before you start running as part of your warm-up routine.

There are four phases in the leg cycle.

The most commonly overlooked phase is the drive phase, where our hips extend. This is often due to our daily habits. We spend a lot of time sitting, which causes our hips to be in a bent position. As a result, our hip flexors become tight and short, making it difficult to extend our leg backward. This can seriously impact our performance, especially during the crucial “drive phase” when we’re supposed to propel ourselves forward into the next stride.

As you can imagine, problems during this phase can greatly affect your running performance and speed. As an extra tip, check out another one of our blogs on how activating your glutes will help you gain more power in each stride you take. Check out this simple yet effective exercise below and learn how to activate your hips to maxmise your running results.

Working on your leg cycle before you run will help you activate the necessary muscles for each phase.

Check out our latest video to learn how to do the run phase correctly