Running Inspiration

If like me, you have been inspired by the London marathon to start running for the first time or maybe to give running a go again after a break then that is fantastic.

I love running, I have run for years and am a big advocate for it and its benefits to mental and physical health. Running can come with some difficulties, nearly half of all runners will pick up an injury through running every year. So, whilst it’s great to get out and go for a run there are some really important things you can do to prevent becoming an injury statistic. Firstly, with the running itself, it is super important to stick to some basic principles of exercises, the FITT pneumonic will be familiar to anyone who did GCSE PE, standing for Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type.

Frequency being how often you are running.

Time is how long you are spending out running.

Intensity, how hard you are working.

Type, is it a tempo run, long run, sprint session or what sort of a run are you doing.

We never want to be increasing all of these factors at once. Depending on what your goal is you may want to increase your distance up to 5k or whatever the race you’re training for is. In this example we would be extending our Time running. So, on the runs where we are pushing further than previously, we wouldn’t want to be increasing our running speed or throwing in some hill reps or trying to run too many days on the trot. Or if you wanted to keep your distance as it is but increase your speed then that would be fine, again as long as its not trying to be all worked on at once.

Part of the reason why runners get so many injuries is overload, this can lead to soft tissue injuries like tears, strains and all sorts of other niggly issues we want to avoid and in some cases stress fractures in bones.

To help deal with the load that running imposes on our body we need to ensure we are strong, so adding some daily exercises such as calf raises, glute bridges, hamstring bridges and squats are all going to help build strong legs. Add to this a few sessions with some plyometrics such as box jumps, or skips, pogo's or any exercise which can help habituate our soft tissues to dealing with impact can be of real benefit to preventing injuries from running.

For more information on how to train succesfully, please get in touch.

Built on Strength – Sustained through Recovery