We are getting close to the release date of my new book "The 365-day Running Journal." With only a few weeks to go, I wanted to share a few snippets of educational material that you can find within the journal to help you get more out of your exercise regime. While this book is called a running journal, you don't have to be a runner to log your workouts, record your milestones and maintain motivation through inspirational quotes and tips.
Cross Training
Running more doesn’t always lead to running better. Although a certain amount of training stress and specificity is needed for training adaptations, running harder, longer or more often is not the answer. As with any type of sport, there are potential side effects to the age-old “more is better” myth. To reduce the chance of an overuse injury, you need to let your run-specific muscles heal. Cross-training can be defined as engaging in different types of activities from your main sport. Since running is full-body, load-bearing activity, cross-training lessens the corrosive nature of moving your body in a forward motion. When you aren’t running, strengthening and recovering your running-specific muscles will help you maintain better form for your next run-specific workout. Although it’s tempting to credit running improvements to hard or long running, to stay healthy, you need to be open to supplementing your run training with other activities.
Warming up/Cooling Down
Warming up is one of the most important aspects of your workout, yet it’s regularly overlooked and undervalued. Although it’s tempting to skip your warm-up to jump right into your workout, you are missing out on the only time to prime your muscles, tendons and joints to do their job more effectively. When you are sedentary, your muscles are at rest. Only about 20% of the blood pumped by the heart is directed to the skeletal muscles. For your muscles to work optimally during exercise, you need to gradually increase your heart rate to start pumping more blood to the muscles. In other words, when you warm-up, you are literally warming up your cold muscles.
Equipment
Starting from the ground up, the most important item is a quality pair of running shoes. With so many brands out there, visit your local running store to get a free gait analysis with the help of a qualified shoe expert. Don’t make the common mistake of selecting a shoe brand based on design and color. Based on your running gait, fitness level, past injury history and fitness, your shoe expert will consider the appropriate cushion level, arch support, upper, midsole and shoe type for your needs. Keeping in mind that shoe sizes vary by manufacture (and shoe model), it’s important to have both feet measured. Because your feet swell during the day, try on shoes at the end of the day. Lastly, shoes should be snug but leaving about a half inch of extra space in the front of the shoe will allow your foot to comfortably move without rubbing.
Designing a training plan
There are many ways to train for a run event. A training plan takes away the guessing so that your workouts are organized, systematic and personalized to your specific training objectives. A training plan will help optimize performance over a specific period, while reducing risk of injury, fatigue and burnout. Not discounting your goals, a well-structured plan should be adaptable, factoring in time constraints, travel, environmental factors and unexpected life situations like injuries, events and sickness. Although a coach can help you become the best version of yourself, the idea of hiring a coach may seem a bit daunting, expensive or unnecessary at this point in your journey. While having a coach is not a requirement, an effective training plan is a must. Here are a few tips for designing your own fully customizable workout schedule.
Sport Nutrition
There will come a point in your athletic journey when your daily diet will no longer provide all the energy that you need to support your workouts. Failure to nutritionally adjust to an increase in training volume and/or intensity increases the risk for injury, sickness and burnout. Sport nutrition recommendations can be confusing as most tips conflict with healthy-eating advice. For example, many people run in order to lose weight. Asking an individual to eat before a morning run may conflict with the belief that a fasted workout will burn more body fat. Additionally, nearly all sport nutrition products – like gels, energy chews and sport drink powders – are loaded with added sugar. And as we all know, our society already has a problem with over-consuming sugar-sweetened beverages. However, the nutrition consumed before, during and after specific run training sessions is designed to support your training sessions, whereas your daily diet supports your workouts and your overall health needs.
Click HERE to order for the September 24th release date.