By Kayla Du Toit
My agility dog was diagnosed with hip dysplasia at 2 years old and now, after she’s turned 5 years old, I started to see that she battles after a tough practice session or a day competing. I started looking at how I can help her and my answer was a proper warm-up and cool-down routine after each practice and competition. It’s true when saying ‘a little goes a long way!’.
Warming up should ideally happen before any physical activity to warm up the muscles needed for that activity in order to minimise the risk of injury and maximise performance. Active and dynamic warm-ups are better than static stretching or no warm-up at all before any athletic performance. A warm-up time of up to 10 min is ideal and a recovery period of 5-15 min after warm-up and before performance activity is recommended. Fatigue shouldn’t be seen during your warm-up, this means you are doing too much.
Here is an example of the warm-up routine we follow before an agility run.
Warm-up routine:
- Trotting (20-30m with the dog on both sides for 2min): stimulates the cardiovascular system to increase blood flow to all the muscles
- Spins (left and right): increase neck, spine, tail flexibility
- Weave between legs: warms up the neck, spine and tail
- Back up: increase hind limb awareness
- Sit to stand: activates hind limb muscles
- Stand up against me: stretches the hips and iliopsoas (extension)
- Wrapping an object: activate the core, increase heart rate and stretch spine
- Give paw: stretches and activates the front limb muscles
- Pop-ups (jump up to touch hand at my hip height with nose): warms up the core and hind limb muscles
- Active iliopsoas stretch (hind feet on a cushion, stretch forward): stretch and warm-up iliopsoas muscle
- Play bow on a cushion: to stretch the hamstrings, hips and back muscles
Now that you’ve had an excellent run with your companion, you firstly need to reward them (reward always, even if it wasn’t the outcome you wanted) and then it’s time to cool down.
Cooling down is important for a few reasons such as bonding with our dog after working together, helps them settle down and relax after a run, and restores shortened muscles to the original length. A cool-down routine focuses on stretching the muscles and removing lactic acid build-up to reduce muscle tightness. A cool-down routine should be 5-10 min but do take note of the day’s temperature as you might need to wet your dog’s ears, belly and feet or put a cooling jacket on to help them cool down.
Here is an example of the cool-down routine we follow after an agility run.
- Walking (2-3min, take the long way back to the car): allows the blood to flow back to the rest of the body from the large muscles in the legs
- Stand up against me: stretches the hips and iliopsoas
- Play bow: to stretch the hamstrings, hips and back muscles
- Active iliopsoas stretch (hind feet on a cushion, stretch forward): stretch and warm-up iliopsoas muscle
- Give paw: stretches the front limb muscles
- Fun examples of the routines:
Spin left and right
Weave between legs
Wrapping an object
Stand up against me