What Keeps You Fit?

[ESCALERA JR.]

Pero pag may mga nanunood na chikas we can always summon our reserve energy to play "whole court".* *Medyo dayain mo na lang sa depensa at antay antay ka na lang ng fastbreak.* *;D

Tama, ganyan na nga ang ginagawa ko ngayon. Palibhasa puro mas bata ang kakampi ko, dinadaan ko na lang sa "senioriity". Pero nung binigyan ako ng 2 sunod na fastbreak, muntikan na tayong ma-himatay. ;D

Maligayang Pasko sa inyong mga Bedista. Masaya na naman ang taon ninyo. Iba talaga kapag Kampeon noh. Parang laging takbong mayaman kahit hindi naglalaro.

Merry Christmas to all Gamefacers!

[mighty_lion]

Advance Merry Christmas din sayo Sir Escalera.

[freak]

Weekend futsal games

[blue scorpion]

Guys, tryout this place in Katipunan right across Ateneo. It is FriiSpirit Fitenss and Fun. It is located on G/F One Burgundy Plaza, Katipunan Ave., Loyola Heights, QC.
You get to experience playing on 6ft x 6ft projector screens or LCD TVs and relax on our cozy bean bag couches.

You can play virtual boxing and tennis on Wii Sports, Jam on Guitar Hero and Get your horror fix on Resident Evil.

Rates start for as low as P50 an hour

[Sam Miguel]

From the New York Times - - -

The Once and Future Way to Run

By CHRISTOPHER McDOUGALL

When you’re stalking barefoot runners, camouflage helps. “Some of them get kind of prancy when they notice you filming,” Peter Larson says. “They put on this notion of what they think barefoot running should be. It looks weird.” Larson, an evolutionary biologist at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire who has been on the barefoot beat for two years now, is also a stickler about his timing. “You don’t want to catch them too early in a run, when they’re cold, or too late, when they’re tired.”

If everything comes together just right, you’ll be exactly where Larson was one Sunday morning in September: peeking out from behind a tree on Governors Island in New York Harbor, his digital video camera nearly invisible on an ankle-high tripod, as the Second Annual New York City Barefoot Run got under way about a quarter-mile up the road. Hundreds of runners — men and women, young and old, athletic and not so much so, natives from 11 different countries — came pattering down the asphalt straight toward his viewfinder.

About half of them were actually barefoot. The rest wore Vibram FiveFingers — a rubber foot glove with no heel cushion or arch support — or Spartacus-style sandals, or other superlight “minimalist” running shoes. Larson surreptitiously recorded them all, wondering how many (if any) had what he was looking for: the lost secret of perfect running.

It’s what Alberto Salazar, for a while the world’s dominant marathoner and now the coach of some of America’s top distance runners, describes in mythical-questing terms as the “one best way” — not the fastest, necessarily, but the best: an injury-proof, evolution-tested way to place one foot on the ground and pick it up before the other comes down. Left, right, repeat; that’s all running really is, a movement so natural that babies learn it the first time they rise to their feet. Yet sometime between childhood and adulthood — and between the dawn of our species and today — most of us lose the knack.

We were once the greatest endurance runners on earth. We didn’t have fangs, claws, strength or speed, but the springiness of our legs and our unrivaled ability to cool our bodies by sweating rather than panting enabled humans to chase prey until it dropped from heat exhaustion. Some speculate that collaboration on such hunts led to language, then shared technology. Running arguably made us the masters of the world.

So how did one of our greatest strengths become such a liability? “The data suggests up to 79 percent of all runners are injured every year,” says Stephen Messier, the director of the J. B. Snow Biomechanics Laboratory at Wake Forest University. “What’s more, those figures have been consistent since the 1970s.” Messier is currently 11 months into a study for the U.S. Army and estimates that 40 percent of his 200 subjects will be hurt within a year. “It’s become a serious public health crisis.”

Nothing seems able to check it: not cross-training, not stretching, not $400 custom-molded orthotics, not even softer surfaces. And those special running shoes everyone thinks he needs? In 40 years, no study has ever shown that they do anything to reduce injuries. On the contrary, the U.S. Army’s Public Health Command concluded in a report in 2010, drawing on three large-scale studies of thousands of military personnel, that using shoes tailored to individual foot shapes had “little influence on injuries.”

Two years ago, in my book, “Born to Run,” I suggested we don’t need smarter shoes; we need smarter feet. I’d gone into Mexico’s Copper Canyon to learn from the Tarahumara Indians, who tackle 100-mile races well into their geriatric years. I was a broken-down, middle-aged, ex-runner when I arrived. Nine months later, I was transformed. After getting rid of my cushioned shoes and adopting the Tarahumaras’ whisper-soft stride, I was able to join them for a 50-mile race through the canyons. I haven’t lost a day of running to injury since.

“Barefoot-style” shoes are now a $1.7 billion industry. But simply putting something different on your feet doesn’t make you a gliding Tarahumara. The “one best way” isn’t about footwear. It’s about form. Learn to run gently, and you can wear anything. Fail to do so, and no shoe — or lack of shoe — will make a difference.

That’s what Peter Larson discovered when he reviewed his footage after the New York City Barefoot Run. “It amazed me how many people in FiveFingers were still landing on their heels,” he says. They wanted to land lightly on their forefeet, or they wouldn’t be in FiveFingers, but there was a disconnect between their intentions and their actual movements. “Once we develop motor patterns, they’re very difficult to unlearn,” Larson explains. “Especially if you’re not sure what it’s supposed to feel like.”

The only way to halt the running-injury epidemic, it seems, is to find a simple, foolproof method to relearn what the Tarahumara never forgot. A one best way to the one best way.

Earlier this year, I may have found it. I was leafing through the back of an out-of-print book, a collection of runners’ biographies called “The Five Kings of Distance,” when I came across a three-page essay from 1908 titled “W. G. George’s Own Account From the 100-Up Exercise.” According to legend, this single drill turned a 16-year-old with almost no running experience into the foremost racer of his day.

I read George’s words: “By its constant practice and regular use alone, I have myself established many records on the running path and won more amateur track-championships than any other individual.” And it was safe, George said: the 100-Up is “incapable of harm when practiced discreetly.”

Could it be that simple? That day, I began experimenting on myself.

When I called Mark Cucuzzella to tell him about my find, he cut me off midsentence. “When can you get down here?” he demanded.

“Here” is Two River Treads, a “natural” shoe store sandwiched between Maria’s Taqueria and German Street Coffee & Candlery in Shepherdstown, W.Va., which, against all odds, Cucuzzella has turned into possibly the country’s top learning center for the reinvention of running.

“What if people found out running can be totally fun no matter what kind of injuries they’ve had?” Cucuzzella said when I visited him last summer. “What if they could see — ” he jerked a thumb back toward his chest — “Exhibit A?”

Cucuzzella is a physician, a professor at West Virginia University’s Department of Family Medicine and an Air Force Reserve flight surgeon. Despite the demands of family life and multiple jobs, he still managed enough early-morning miles in his early 30s to routinely run marathons at a 5:30-per-mile pace. But he constantly battled injuries; at age 34, severe degenerative arthritis led to foot surgery. If he continued to run, his surgeon warned, the arthritis and pain would return.

Cucuzzella was despondent, until he began to wonder if there was some kind of furtive, Ninja way to run, as if you were sneaking up on someone. Cucuzzella threw himself into research and came across the work of, among others, Nicholas Romanov, a sports scientist in the former Soviet Union who developed a running technique he called the Pose Method. Romanov essentially had three rules: no cushioned shoes, no pushing off from the toes and, most of all, no landing on the heel.

Once Cucuzzella got used to this new style, it felt suspiciously easy, more like playful bouncing than serious running. As a test, he entered the Marine Corps Marathon. Six months after being told he should never run again, he finished in 2:28, just four minutes off his personal best.

“It was the beginning of a new life,” Cucuzzella told me. “I couldn’t believe that after a medical education and 20 years of running, so much of what I’d been taught about the body was being turned on its head.” Two weeks before turning 40, he won the Air Force Marathon and has since completed five other marathons under 2:35. Shortly before his 45th birthday this past September, he beat men half his age to win the Air Force Marathon again. He was running more on less training than 10 years before, but “felt fantastic.”

When he tried to spread the word, however, he encountered resistance. At a Runner’s World forum I attended before the Boston Marathon in April 2010, he told the story of how he bounced back from a lifetime of injuries by learning to run barefoot and relying on his legs’ natural shock absorption. Martyn Shorten, the former director of the Nike Sports Research Lab who now conducts tests on shoes up for review in Runner’s World, followed him to the microphone. “A physician talking about biomechanics — I guess I should talk about how to perform an appendectomy,” Shorten said. He then challenged Cucuzzella’s belief that cushioned shoes do more harm than good.

No matter. Cucuzzella went home and began hosting his own conferences. Peter Larson traveled from New Hampshire for Cucuzzella’s first gathering on a snowy weekend this past January. “I was a bit curious about how many people might show up to such an event in rural West Virginia,” Larson says. “Were the panelists going to outnumber the audience?” In fact, more than 150 attendees crowded right up to the dais.

Since then, West Virginia has become a destination for a growing number of those who are serious about the grass-roots reinvention of running. Galahad Clark, a seventh-generation shoemaker who created the Vivobarefoot line, flew in from London with the British running coach Lee Saxby for a one-day meeting with Cucuzzella. International researchers like Craig Richards, from Australia, and Hiro Tanaka, chairman of Exercise Physiology at the University of Fukuoka, have also visited, as well as scientists from a dozen different American states.

“He has turned a small town in an obese state into a running-crazed bastion of health,” Larson says. “Mark’s effort in transforming Shepherdstown is a testament to what a single person can accomplish.”

Not that he has everything figured out. I was at one of Cucuzzella’s free barefoot running clinics in May when he confronted his big problem: how do you actually teach this stuff? He had about 60 of us practicing drills on a grassy playground. “Now to run,” he said, “just bend forward from the ankles.” We all looked down at our ankles.

“No, no,” Cucuzzella said. “Posture, remember? Keep your heads up.”

We lifted our heads, and most of us then forgot to lean from the ankles. At that moment, a young girl flashed past us on her way to the monkey bars. Her back was straight, her head was high and her bare feet skittered along right under her hips.

“You mean like — ” someone said, pointing after the girl.

“Right,” Cucuzzella said. “Just watch her.”

So what ruined running for the rest of us who aren’t Tarahumara or 10 years old?

Back in the ’60s, Americans “ran way more and way faster in the thinnest little shoes, and we never got hurt,” Amby Burfoot, a longtime Runner’s World editor and former Boston Marathon champion, said during a talk before the Lehigh Valley Half-Marathon I attended last year. “I never even remember talking about injuries back then,” Burfoot said. “So you’ve got to wonder what’s changed.”

Bob Anderson knows at least one thing changed, because he watched it happen. As a high-school senior in 1966, he started Distance Running News, a twice-yearly magazine whose growth was so great that Anderson dropped out of college four years later to publish it full time as Runner’s World. Around then, another fledgling operation called Blue Ribbon Sports was pioneering cushioned running shoes; it became Nike. Together, the magazine and its biggest advertiser rode the running boom — until Anderson decided to see whether the shoes really worked.

“Some consumer advocate needed to test this stuff,” Anderson told me. He hired Peter Cavanagh, of the Penn State University biomechanics lab, to stress-test new products mechanically. “We tore the shoes apart,” Anderson says. He then graded shoes on a scale from zero to five stars and listed them from worst to first.

When a few of Nike’s shoes didn’t fare so well in the 1981 reviews, the company pulled its $1 million advertising contract with Runner’s World. Nike already had started its own magazine, Running, which would publish shoe reviews and commission star writers like Ken Kesey and Hunter S. Thompson.

“Nike would never advertise with me again,” Anderson says. “That hurt us bad.” In 1985, Anderson sold Runner’s World to Rodale, which, he says, promptly abolished his grading system. Today, every shoe in Runner’s World is effectively “recommended” for one kind of runner or another. David Willey, the magazine’s current editor, says that it only tests shoes that “are worth our while.” After Nike closed its magazine, it took its advertising back to Runner’s World. (Megan Saalfeld, a Nike spokeswoman, says she was unable to find someone to comment about this episode.)

“It’s a grading system where you can only get an A,” says Anderson, who went on to become the founder and chief executive of Ujena Swimwear.

Just as the shoe reviews were changing, so were the shoes: fear, the greatest of marketing tools, entered the game. Instead of being sold as performance accessories, running shoes were rebranded as safety items, like bike helmets and smoke alarms. Consumers were told they’d get hurt, perhaps for life, if they didn’t buy the “right” shoes. It was an audacious move that flew in the face of several biological truths: humans had thrived as running animals for two million years without corrective shoes, and asphalt was no harder than the traditional hunting terrains of the African savanna.

[Sam Miguel]

Cont'd from above - - -

The Once and Future Way to Run

In 1985, Benno Nigg, founder and currently co-director of the University of Calgary’s Human Performance Lab, floated the notion that impact and rear-foot motion (called pronation) were dangerous. His work helped spur an arms race of experimental technology to counter those risks with plush heels and wedged shoes. Running magazines spread the new gospel. To this day, Runner’s World tells beginners that their first workout should be opening their wallets: “Go to a specialty running store . . . you’ll leave with a comfortable pair of shoes that will have you running pain- and injury-free.”

Nigg now believes mistakes were made. “Initial results were often overinterpreted and were partly responsible for a few ‘blunders’ in sport-shoe construction,” he said in a speech to the International Society of Biomechanics in 2005. The belief in the need for cushioning and pronation control, he told me, was, in retrospect, “completely wrong thinking.” His stance was seconded in June 2010, when The British Journal of Sports Medicine reported that a study of 105 women enrolled in a 13-week half-marathon training program found that every single runner who was given motion-control shoes to control excess foot pronation was injured. “You don’t need any protection at all except for cold and, like, gravel,” Nigg now says.

Of course, the only way to know what shoes have done to runners would be to travel back to a time when no one ever wore them. So that’s what one anthropologist has effectively done. In 2009, Daniel Lieberman, chairman of Harvard’s human evolutionary biology department, located a school in Kenya where no one wore shoes. Lieberman noticed something unusual: while most runners in shoes come down hard on their heels, these barefoot Kenyans tended to land softly on the balls of their feet.

Back at the lab, Lieberman found that barefoot runners land with almost zero initial impact shock. Heel-strikers, by comparison, collide with the ground with a force equal to as much as three times their body weight. “Most people today think barefoot running is dangerous and hurts, but actually you can run barefoot on the world’s hardest surfaces without the slightest discomfort and pain.”

Lieberman, who is 47 and a six-time marathoner, was so impressed by the results of his research that he began running barefoot himself. So has Irene Davis, director of Harvard Medical School’s Spaulding National Running Center. “I didn’t run myself for 30 years because of injuries,” Davis says. “I used to prescribe orthotics. Now, honest to God, I run 20 miles a week, and I haven’t had an injury since I started going barefoot.”

Last fall, at the end of a local 10-mile trail race, I surprised myself by finishing five minutes faster than I had four years ago, when I was in much better shape. I figured the result was a fluke — until it happened again. No special prep, awful travel schedule and yet a personal best in a six-mile race.

“I don’t get it,” I told Cucuzzella this past June when we went for a run together through the Shepherd University campus in Shepherdstown. “I’m four years older. I’m pretty sure I’m heavier. I’m not doing real workouts, just whatever I feel like each day. The only difference is I’ve been 100-Upping.”

It was five months since I discovered W.S. George’s “100-Up,” and I’d been doing the exercise regularly. In George’s essay, he says he invented the 100-Up in 1874, when he was an 16-year-old chemist’s apprentice in England and could train only during his lunch hour. By Year 2 of his experiment, the overworked lab assistant was the fastest amateur miler in England. By Year 5, he held world records in everything from the half-mile to 10 miles.

So is it possible that a 19th-century teenager succeeded where 21st-century technology has failed?

“Absolutely, yes,” says Steve Magness, a sports scientist who works with top Olympic prospects at Nike’s elite “Oregon Project.” He was hired by Alberto Salazar to create, essentially, a squad of anti-Salazars. Despite his domination of the marathon in the ’80s, Salazar was plagued with knee and hamstring problems. He was also a heel-striker, which he has described as “having a tire with a nail in it.” Magness’s brief is to find ways to teach Nike runners to run barefoot-style and puncture-proof their legs.

“From what you’re telling me, it sounds promising,” Magness told me. “I’d love to see it in action.”

Mark Cucuzzella was just as eager. “All right,” he said in the middle of our run. “Let’s get a look at this.” I snapped a twig and dropped the halves on the ground about eight inches apart to form targets for my landings. The 100-Up consists of two parts. For the “Minor,” you stand with both feet on the targets and your arms cocked in running position. “Now raise one knee to the height of the hip,” George writes, “bring the foot back and down again to its original position, touching the line lightly with the ball of the foot, and repeat with the other leg.”

That’s all there is to it. But it’s not so easy to hit your marks 100 times in a row while maintaining balance and proper knee height. Once you can, it’s on to the Major: “The body must be balanced on the ball of the foot, the heels being clear of the ground and the head and body being tilted very slightly forward. . . . Now, spring from the toe, bringing the knee to the level of the hip. . . . Repeat with the other leg and continue raising and lowering the legs alternately. This action is exactly that of running.”

Cucuzzella didn’t like it as a teaching method — he loved it. “It makes so much physiological and anatomical sense,” he said. “The key to injury-free running is balance, elasticity, stability in midstance and cadence. You’ve got all four right there.”

Cucuzzella began trying it himself. As I watched, I recalled another lone inventor, a Czechoslovakian soldier who dreamed up a similar drill: he’d throw dirty clothes in the bathtub with soap and water, then jog on top. You can’t heel strike or overstride on slippery laundry. There’s only one way to run in a tub: the one best way.

At the 1952 Olympics, Emil Zatopek became the only runner ever to win gold medals in all three distance events: 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters and the marathon, the first he ever ran. Granted, “the Human Locomotive” wasn’t a pretty sight. During his final push to the finish line, his head would loll and his arms would grab at the air “as if he’d just been stabbed through the heart,” as one sportswriter put it.

But from the waist down, Zatopek was always quick, light and springy, like a kid swooping across a playground — or like this once-arthritic physician in front of me, laughing with excitement as he hopped up and down in his bare feet in a parking lot.

[mighty_lion]

Pagsinabi ni Misis na maglaba at mamalantsa, isipin mo nalang exercise din yun. For extra calorie burn maglinis ka na rin kusina at banyo. ;D

[maroonmartian]

Mamelengke po ng maaga. Grabe ang aga magbukas at Philippine public market.

I'm raving also this sport, walking. Saan? Sa palengke.Pero iniiba-iba ko ruta ko para di magsawa. Also trying to improve on Aikido.

[Joescoundrel]

6 AMAZING CORE EXERCISES YOU SHOULD BE DOING IF YOU’RE A RUNNER

by Herwig Natmessnig | 17.07.2016


If you like to run or are thinking about starting to run, you should immediately consider the importance of a strong core! Plenty of runners underestimate the power of adequately equipped abdominal muscles. If you want to improve your running endurance and form, you want to keep your core activated with every step you take.

GET YOUR RUNNING FORM IN CHECK

Your pelvis and trunk have to be stabilized while running, especially because of the shifting of weight from one leg to another. When you’re running, your back muscles and abs are working hard to stabilize your entire body. The connection of your muscles and bones in areas like the spine, shoulder girdle and pelvis help you keep that upright and stable posture you should have while running.

A stable upper body is vital for efficient running form. If you have weak core muscles, you are more likely to compensate with other inefficient movements. This decreases the power of the push off, thus reducing the effectiveness of your steps. That’s why upper body strength training for runners is inalienable.

STAY INJURY-FREE AND HAVE FUN

When talking about a strong core, it’s really important that we dig a bit deeper into the benefits beyond running performance. Post-run back pain is a common complaint among runners and is often the result of weak back muscles. Running is a high-impact sport in which your body is subject to forces of up to three or four times your body weight. Over time, these small impacts can cause the intervertebral discs in your spine to lose fluid and shrink. When this happens, the ability to absorb the shock from running is reduced. Don’t worry, when we sleep this fluid loss is replenished and the discs return back to their original size. But, the stronger your core is, the better equipped the muscles are to keep your spine stable and your runs injury free and fun!

THE 6 BEST EXERCISES FOR A STRONG BACK AND ABS

These bodyweight exercises can be done by anyone and everyone – not just runners. But, they are particularly good for runners because they help to develop that stability and strength for efficient running we talked about earlier.

- Perform 3 rounds of 8-12 reps
- Rest 90 seconds between rounds
- Incorporate these exercises into your routine 2x per week (rest 48 hours in between sessions)
- Make sure you do warm-up exercises first for approx. 15 minutes
- This workout is great for something extra after a run

1. LUNGE AND TWIST

Start:
Stand with your feet hip-width apart, core engaged and back straight. Open your arms out to the side with palms facing forward and hands at shoulder height.

How to perform the exercise:
Step forward into a lunge with your left leg. Be sure that your left knee does not go beyond the tip of the left shoe. Rotate your torso and turn your upper body to the left. Hold that position for 2 seconds (Note: Are your shoulders scrunching up to your ears? Keep them down!). Then return your body back to center and switch sides.

2. LOW SIDE PLANK WITH LEG LIFT AND SWING

Start:
Begin in a low side plank position. Make sure that your elbow is directly under your shoulder and your core is engaged (of course!). Additionally, activate your glutes and legs. Tuck your hips under to lock your pelvis into a safe and stable position. Ideally, your shoulders, hips and legs should form a straight line. Rest your upper hand on your thigh or put your hand on your hip.

How to perform the exercise:
Lift your top leg up in the air. Activate that core throughout the entire exercise. Keep your hips stacked on top of each other and your pelvis straight. Move your leg forward and backward. The idea is to perform this exercise in a controlled manner, so make sure you hold each position for about 2 seconds to really get the most out of the exercise. Return to the starting side plank position and then switch to the other side.

3. MARCHING BRIDGE

Start:
Lie down on your back and start to activate your abs. Focus on eliminating the low-back arch by keeping it flat against the floor. Bend your knees at a 90 degree angle with your feet flat on the floor. Your arms can just rest right by your side, palms facing down.

How to perform the exercise:
Press through the heels of your feet to lift your hips off of the floor and engage your glutes. Your shoulders, pelvis and knees should form a straight line. Lift your left leg up, maintaining the 90 degree angle with the leg, and hold this positon for 2 seconds. Your foot should be flexed the entire time. Control the release of your foot back onto the floor and then switch to the other side.

4. QUADRUPED LIMB RAISES

Start:
Start on all fours. Your hands should be shoulder-width apart and your knees directly underneath your hips. Bend your elbows slightly, spread the fingers wide and activate through the palms of the hands by pressing into the ground. Make sure your core is activated, eliminating any arch in the back. Be sure that your upper back is awake and ready. Your shoulders blades should not be squeezing together. Finally, pull those shoulders down and away from the ears.

How to perform the exercise:
Extend your left arm forward and your right leg back, lengthening between the heel of your right foot to the tip of your left finger tips. Keep your foot flexed throughout the movement. Hold the position for about 2 seconds and then return to the starting position. Don’t forget to do the other side 🙂

5. QUADRUPED TRUNK ROTATION AND CRUNCH

Start:
Once again, we will start this exercise on all fours. Make sure you go through all the form checkpoints mentioned in the previous exercise to start this one as well.

How to perform this exercise:
Lightly place your right hand on the back of your head. Keep a tight core as you lift your left leg and bring your left knee to your right elbow. Then, rotate your upper body to the right while simultaneously lifting your left leg up to the side. Be sure to maintain a 90 degree angle with the leg. Be sure that your hips are square to the ground throughout the exercise. Hold each position for 2 seconds before returning to start. Both sides, please.

6. HIGH PLANK KNEE-TO-ELBOW + SIDE KNEE RAISE

Start:
Start out in a high plank position. Your hands underneath your shoulders and, of course, shoulder-width apart. Keep a slight bend in your elbow, engage your glutes and activate the core to keep your back straight. Your shoulders and hips should be in a straight line.

How to perform this exercise:
Keep that strong high plank position. Bring your left knee to the outside of your left elbow first. Then raise that knee out to the side maintaining a 90 degree angle with the leg. Control the movement and be sure to hold both positions for 2 seconds. Your shoulders and hips should always form a straight line. Keep your hips square to the ground and your glutes and hips tucked and tight throughout the exercise. Return to the starting position and switch to the other side.

Ready to mix up your running training? Cross-training is the answer! By trying another sport like climbing, rowing, slacklining, stand up paddling or kayaking to improve that core strength, coordination and stabilization, you will inevitably improve your running!

Now you’re ready to transform your body completely with our bodyweight training app, right? Runtastic Results helps get your entire body fit and strong…just what you need to give your running performance that extra kick!

[Joescoundrel]

8 STRENGTH TRAINING & NUTRITION TIPS FOR TODAY’S RUNNERS

by Runtastic Team | 30.11.2017

by James Poole
Captain of adidas Runners London

If you went back 30 or 40 years and spoke to a competitive runner, you would have found a very different training regime to that of the modern athlete. The runner of old became strong from a diet of high mileage and hard workouts. Food was simply the way to fuel the body for the next workout and a banana and bottle of water would get them through a race or training session.

Today, a runner needs to think about more than logging miles and eating the odd banana. Most will spend their days in an office seated in front of a screen. Long periods of inactivity, poor posture and hectic lifestyles are hardly conducive to injury-free running. In fact, depending on which research study you read, as many as 8 out of 10 runners will get injured over the next 12 months.

The good news is that there are some easy wins for beginner and experienced runners alike. Strength and conditioning exercises, in particular, are not difficult to learn and can be carried out at the end of a run. Start with around ten minutes of strength exercises (or five to six exercises) after your run and build from there. Try some of these below.

1. COMPOUND MOVEMENTS
The best exercises for runners focus on movement, not muscles. Compound, multi-joint exercises such as deadlifts, squats, pull-ups and step-ups onto a raised platform are perfect examples. This sort of exercise is actually very similar to the functional movement we do in everyday life: picking things up, and pulling or pushing things.

2. BODYWEIGHT EXERCISES
Combine compound movements with bodyweight exercises to create a balanced workout. The great thing about bodyweight routines is that they can help you recover from running while still building the strength necessary to help prevent future overuse injuries. A 10-minute program of lunges, side planks, push-ups and side leg lifts completed after easy runs can be an ideal way to keep injury at bay.

3. HIP FLEXIBILITY
The majority of running injuries are caused by weak hips — a major problem area for runners who sit for most of the day. Runners should include glute and hip-oriented exercises since these two muscle groups are the main drivers of the running stride. Lateral leg raises, pistol squats (one-legged squats), clam shells and hip hikes will all help improve the firing pattern and develop stronger muscles.

4. BUILD SLOWLY
It’s important that strength and conditioning sessions are not viewed as a HIIT class. Runners should start with a few exercises done slowly and with good technique. The body adapts best to working multiple muscles groups, so add a variety of movements and exercises to get the full benefit.

5. FOCUS ON A BALANCED DIET
Advancements in sports nutrition have also made huge leaps over the past few decades, and a good balance of fat, protein and carbohydrate is now considered essential for a healthy body. Where once a runner might have fuelled on a bowl of porridge and a banana, now a dizzying range of powders, gels, blocks and bars are available in running stores and supermarkets alike. While these training and racing aids have made runners’ lives infinitely more convenient, they also present a mind-blowing array of options.

6. FIND OUT WHAT WORKS FOR YOU
There are a massive number of options on the market, so try a few in training and work out what you like. Nutrition products can be an effective and convenient way of getting protein, good fats and carbohydrates into the body. But don’t forget that there are plenty of natural options available as well. Dates, figs, bananas, avocados and milk can all offer natural alternatives to nutrition products.

7. BEWARE OF OVERCOMPENSATING
In the period before a race, training volume typically increases and a runner can begin to feel hungry more often. The insatiable hunger can mean individuals look to higher-calorie foods to “reward” themselves and satisfy the cravings. On average, a runner will burn around 600-800 calories on a one-hour run, equivalent to the calories in a burger and fries. A small amount of protein and carbohydrate immediately after the run can help curb these cravings and prevent unwanted weight gain.

8. DON’T TRY ANYTHING NEW ON RACE DAY
The temptation to try something new on race day is strong. Lacklustre training, race day nerves or the desire to knock a few minutes off a personal best are all factors that encourage runners to try something different when it matters most. Runners should avoid this temptation and stick to what they have rehearsed in training. Playing Russian roulette with your GI tract come race day can end in an unpleasant race at best or numerous trips to the portaloo at worst.

Whether you are a competitive runner or just starting out, looking after your body is essential for longevity in running and maximum enjoyment. Paying some attention to strengthening muscles and tendons and fuelling yourself properly before, during and after a run, can lead to a long and fruitful running experience.

About James:

James Poole is captain of adidas Runners London, a global running community that connects like-minded people through run clubs, socially and at events, such as adidas City Runs – a new series of closed road, mass participation races.