Stretches Prior to Running - part of the women's fitness video series by GeoBeats. Stretches Prior to Running Before running, you want to do dynamic stretches. What I mean by dynamic stretches are things like this, movement. So these are called leg swings. You want to do about 10 on each leg, and then you also want to do them crossing your body, such as this. Comes across your body, this helps open up those hips and loosen them up. You also want to come up on your toes a little bit and do some calf raises. Reaching up if you can, loosening things up. I know many of you might have taken gym class when you were in elementary school and they would make you just stand there and hold a stretch like this. Or even bounce, things like this. No one does stretches like that anymore. They've not been proven to help you at all regarding your exercise - they've not been proven to help you with injury prevention or improving your exercise. So now it's better to actually do movement as a form of stretching before you work out. So I also do some twists and some arm swings. Just a few minutes, get your body moving, and then you can head out on your run, just like that.