Injury Prevention: Dynamic Warm Up Video
Risk of injury increases anytime you try new training techniques, ramp up the intensity of your training, or take on familiar, yet hard workouts on a weekly basis. To reduce the risk of injury and give your body a chance to perform its best, make sure to include more than just a slow warm up jog before you pick up the pace. By more, we mean include some dynamic warm up exercises to get the glutes, abdominals quads, hips flexors and hamstrings warmed up and ready for action in workouts such as hill training, track workout, strength exercises or even tempo runs.
A few of our favorite dynamic warmup exercises include high knees, butt kicks, side to side, karaoke and single leg swings. Watch our video for demonstrations of each or read our descriptions below. Either way, make sure to incorporate some sort of dynamic warm up before your high intensity workouts!
High Knees: Stand with your arms by your sides. Raise one knee up and forward, swing opposite arm. Bring this foot down and raise the other. Repeat movement coming forward. Continue for 30 seconds.
Butt Kicks: As you run, kick your heels to your butt. Goal is to kick your butt as many times as possible in 30 seconds. Keep back straight.
Side to Side: Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and up on your toes. Swing your arms up over your head opening up your abdominals and spine as you hop off one foot taking a wide step. Let your arms swing down and back up again as you continue to slide side to side for 30 seconds up to one minute. Repeat facing the opposite direction.
Karaoke: Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, and cross your right foot in front of your left foot keeping your hips and upper body straight and facing out. Continue to cross the opposite foot in front of the other. Continue for 30 seconds and then repeat facing the opposite direction for 30 seconds.
Straight Leg Swing: Stand with feet hip-width apart. Swing one leg straight in front of you and then swing back behind you keeping back straight and pelvic square. Repeat for 30 seconds to one minute on each side. Modified: Find something on the same side as the leg you are swing to hold on to for balance.
Hill Podcast Review and Win a Free Month of Training
We've teamed up with Run Momma Run to share the love of running and provide useful training tips to runners. Today we talked hills and why they are an important part of any training plan. Check out our tips and advice here.
1. Always warm up for 15 minutes and include dynamic stretching (butt kicks, high knees)
2. Start incorporating hills into your regular runs & then add long hill repeats after establishing a base of 10-15 miles a week.
3. Long hill repeats - accelerate over the first 10-20 steps increasing to regular running pace.
4. Uphill form - Keep your head & chest up & focus eyes directly ahead of you. Use your arms in a forward and up motion to drive you up the hill. Concentrate on over using the arms!
5. Downhill form - Don't overstride but let gravity be your friend. Keep your arms relaxed. Aim to have your foot land underneath you.
6. Injury Prevention - Watch out for nervy pain or tightness during the workout and end of your workout that doesn't go away. Dull soreness or muscle fatigue is normal.
7. Find a running buddy to do hill repeats and have fun!
Also, we are giving away one month of our Express Training Package! This plan includes an initial consultation, weekly workouts and a plan geared towards your goal. We can coach you from anywhere! To enter, do the following:
1) Tell us why you want a coach by commenting on this blog post
2) and comment on our Facebook page ("like" us first to comment!)
We'll pick a winner on March 1st at 9am est.
Altitude, humidity, wind...
Are just some of the elements that Mother Nature throws our way to make sure we aren't sleeping during our training! Those elements can make a run much more challenging yet so much more rewarding, if you are prepared.
Living and running in NYC we are faced with the heat, humidity, wind and pedestrian traffic. We get use to them and learn to adapt. We know where all the water fountains are in the city; we bring money and our metro cards, just in case; we slow down when the humidity is out of control; we zig zag to avoid the brutal crush of the wind as it funnels down streets; we learn to relish the lateral movement workout that pedestrian traffic offers up. Also, we know where the inclines, "hills", are and how to avoid them.
For the past week, I have been in Park City, Utah and thus, I have had to adapt to new elements: altitude (7,000 feet), trails, wind and a lot more hills! Instead of trying to pound out the miles my training program dictates, I'm adapting to the elements. I'm not able to run as far because the altitude catches up with me, the wind seems to hit me from all sides and I can't avoid hils. So, I have thrown my training miles to the wind and am enjoying the incredible views of snow capped mountains at a more leisurely pace, even a walk sometimes.
When battling new elements, slow down, breath deeply, stay hydrated and take in your new surroundings instead of fighting them.