Tips for Beginners

Audio Transcript

Coach Dylan: Hey Runners Connect fans and friends. Welcome to another episode of Runners Connect Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast.

As always, I’m going to be answering your running and training questions so that you can train smarter, stay healthy, and achieve your goals.

Today we have a great question from Deejay.

Deejay: Are there guidelines for getting in shape before you start running, like drills to improve form or strengthen the necessary muscles or to identify weaknesses and things that may lead to injuries?

Are there things that I can work on at home and that I could get done quite regularly? Thanks

Dylan: Wonderful question Deejay and one that I believe many people don’t spend enough time thinking about prior to beginning a running program.

I think a lot of runners or people who are getting ready to run should have a base of fitness prior to begin your training.

Running inherently requires a lot from your body in terms of the impact forces so we must prepare the body to be able to withstand this repetitive trauma.

The best way of doing so is to become increasingly more involved with any running specific strengthening program.

Luckily for us, a running specific strengthening program isn’t so different from other gym related or at home exercise routines.

Running requires a vast amount of musculature meaning it’s a total body workout. We shouldn’t avoid our major systems in the gym or at home.

Runners tend to get a lot of repetitive injuries such as shin splints, runner’s knee, and IT Band Syndrome among many others. Some of this is the cause of biomechanical issues or doing too much too soon.

What many of us do not know many of us never do is perform pre-haps exercises to ensure our body is ready to tackle the force or load in which we are asking.

Running is a primarily a catabolic activity meaning we are constantly breaking down our muscles whereas strength training is an anabolic activity or building up muscle.

These are two sides of the same coin and we need both to be successful and to ensure our bodies able to handle the miles and the intensity.

I have fallen victim to poor maintenance work repeatedly. I have seen P. T’s, chiros, and massage therapists who always point out my direct weaknesses. This is mostly in my smaller external rotators in the hips.

I looked back at some point and I wished I would have had done this because it may not have turned out as it did.

You’re on the right track and we don’t want to begin something when it’s too late. It’s best to start now start small and think big.

I would like to provide you with a list of some simple exercises and drills that will ensure your body is ready to withstand the initial rigors the running provides.

If you’re interested in performing these exercises at home, I would recommend you pause the podcast and grab a pen and a piece of paper.

Jot down these exercises and you can better be able to look them up on our website as well as other videos and which you can learn how to do them properly.

The first list of exercises that I’m going to give you is something that you can do at home in your living room.

First exercises for you are planks, both lateral, front, and back planks. Body squats. Think about adding weight as you become more accustomed to this sort of training.

Pushups, both standard, wide arm pushups, military pushups, and the ten second pushups. Back hyper’s, Bulgarian split squats, box jumps or rocket jumps.

My favorite exercise to do prior to running, the lunge matrix. Some of the more visually appealing exercises; Jane Fonda’s, dead bugs, fire hydrants, bird dogs, and table.

Now, I hope you had the time to write down some of these exercises so that you can go in and look at how to perform them and how to do them correctly on your own.

For the planks, I would recommend you hold them for 30-45 seconds and with all the exercises that I’m recommending for you, I recommend that we start going through them two times through and holding for 30-45 seconds on the planks, and doing eight to ten reps on all the other exercises.

What a lot of these exercises have in common is that they are going to stimulate the core muscles. This is anything that really connects to our pelvic girdle. That goes from our legs all the way to our abdominal muscles.

It’s important the running that we do, we treat it as a total body workout because a lot of it requires a combination and a direct influence from our entire body to work in sync. Being well rounded is incredibly important.

The next group of exercises that I have for you are going to be drills. I recommend that you do them prior to doing the exercises or even post exercises.

For those of you who are already running, I love to do these between the warm up and starting a harder workout effort.

So, for each of these exercises, we’re going to want to perform them at a distance from 20-30 meters. We can go down and back, so you’ll do two times total.

The first one that we have is a match. The more advanced part of this is a skip exercise. Match and skip. Straight leg bounce and runs, side runs and side Jack jacks with a skip.

Leg swings, both vertically and laterally, hurdle drills, and strides. These exercises allow us to increase our body’s efficiency as well as coordination when it comes to running. It helps us a lot of form drills and allows us to better get into running and prepare the body before we do a harder effort.

We don’t want to do all these on a daily basis, but making or taking two to four days out of your week will make due.

Start small, pick a few exercises from the list, and try them out. We want to make a habit out of these.

It is important that we do not overload the system within the first week and burn ourselves out. Pick a few, find some and implement them with their running.

Having a strong base of support in both maintenance and progressiveness will allow you to further your long jeopardy and ensure you can tackle your training with limited injury related setbacks.

It is best to do these while we’re healthy rather than having to do them while we are down.

I want to thank you all for joining me again today. Please try to get these exercise in and try a few that you haven’t done already.

See what they can do for you because I guarantee you that most of us who are listening right now, do not do enough work outside of running because I do not do enough for myself.

This is something that I’m continually working on and I think that you can add this to make sure that you are a stronger and more resilient runner.

Thank you all and thank you so much for submitting your question today. Podcasts fans, I hope you have enjoyed this talk presented by yours truly.

If you have any further questions you want to hear more about this, please feel free to shoot me an email at dylan@runnerconnect.net

I love to have a conversation with you and per always, thank you so much for visiting and listening today’s Q and A. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day.