Stretching and Strength Training

Stretching makes you feel younger!

Week #7

Two important fitness components that you should begin to include along with your running are stretching and strength training. Below you’ll find some helpful information on both:

Stretching

Stretching helps you stay flexible and prevent injuries. Ideally, you should stretch for about 10 minutes before your run, and ten minutes after. If you only have time to stretch once, howwever, the best time to stretch is after your run, This is because your muscles have had a chance to warm up, and be receptive to the benefit of the stretches.

Usually, before I go out and run, I do a few quick stretches to limber up, including leg lunges, side bends, and heel stretches. when I come back from my run, I usually perform stretches on the floor.

Here is a link to the most popular running stretches:

Also, sometimes I like to take a hot bath before a run, especially a long one, because it’s a relaxing way to warm up all my muscles. I’ve found in long races that a relaxing bath really helps me feel limber!

Yoga

If you practice yoga, you will enjoy the benefits of a more limber body when you run. I just tried yoga for the first time this morning (it was a beginner’s class). It happened to be after my morning run, and it really felt great! So if you want to give Yoga or Pilates a try, that will help you avoid running injuries.

Strength Training

At minimum, you want to build some core strengthening exercises, and ideally some upper body strengthening exercises on your “off” running days. Since strong core muscles are critical to proper running form, stregthening them is key. You can do this in your bedroom. You don’t need a gym membership to build strength.

For stregthening core muscles, simple calistenics like situps and body crunches work great. For upper body, I have a routine I do with hand weights that stregthen my shoulders, biceps, back and chest muscles.  The exercises I use come from Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s Faith-Based Fitness (published in 1997), but many of these simple strength exercises can be found online or on a basic strength training DVD.

By the way, Dr. Kenneth Cooper is known as “The Father of Aerobics” after writing the book, “Aerobics,” published in 1968.  He coined the term, the jogging craze took off, and the rest is history.  You can read mor about Dr, Cooper here.

Start building strectching and strength training into your routine. As I mentioned, it doesn’t have to be a lot — even a little bit will help with overall fitness, running form, muscle tone, injury prevention and flexibility.  And it will balance out your overall fitness and keep you feeling great!