Make Life Better by Miles
Sports massage can provide tremendous benefits as part of a structured training programme. It improves the condition of muscle tissue by reducing stiffness, pain and fatigue, and increases your flexibility and range of movement. Removing excess tension in your muscles can help improve balance between muscle groups and posture.
And where you have an injury, massage can improve the speed and quality of muscle repair.
Read more here to find when you should go and what you should expect.
Running to a programme takes commitment and effort. Very often the easiest thing to do is to miss the odd session here and there, ease back on the length of the long run, go slightly slower during that tempo run, and for most people this is not a problem if it doesn’t become the norm. Their training will not suffer too much.
Yet not hitting their goals during each and every session is a problem for some runners and could become a problem for you if you don’t read the signs. Doing exactly what the programme says can lead to the dangers of ‘overtraining’.
To become a better runner you need to run. It’s an unavoidable truth. Let’s face it, you would never become a brilliant concert pianist by playing lots of different instruments. But runners do tend to become single-minded about their training, fearing that any time spent doing something else is simply a waste of precious running time.
This tunnel vision comes partly from the fact that running is an easy sport. Simply slip on some shorts and a top (though with the current weather we are having a few more layers are needed), chuck on your shoes and you are out of the door, with a limitless set of running routes and terrains out there for you.
In contrast other forms of training can seem annoying. You either need more kit and equipment (such as cycling), or equipment and specialist premises (such as rowing and swimming), or just because they seem like a lot more effort (such as weight work in the gym, or even worse, at home – for anyone who has tried to do regular strengthening exercises at home will testity, its tough, and that’s just the motivation to get started!)
But convenience, equipment and effort aside, these things are important. Other training is certainly not wasted time.
First and foremost the body likes a break from the monotony. Other types of aerobic training (cycling, swimming, rowing) work the aerobic system and muscles in slightly different ways, but ultimately they give your joints a break from the impact of pounding out the miles.
But probably most important of all is that other training will work muscles that surround your main running muscles, so reducing the chance of injury and making you a more efficient and effective runner.
While the advice of a few experienced running sages is always very welcome to us mere mortals, and especially so for those just starting out on their running journey, there are some pieces of supposed wisdom that are best ignored. Probably the king amongst them is that often heard refrain of ‘no pain, no gain’. If the training session doesn’t hurt, then its not working, right?
No, that would be wrong.
Putting the right amount of effort into a session is undoubtedly a good thing, but pain is the body’s way of telling you that you are overdoing it. Knowing exactly when training effort moves from ‘difficult’ (your lungs are working hard, and the effects of lactic acid build up is leading to a burning sensation in your muscles) becomes ‘painful’ (leading to potential injury) comes with experience. You want to be able to run injury free for as long as possible, and that means avoiding pain.
One useful method to ensure you avoid crossing the threshold between ‘difficult’ and ‘painful’ is to remember that 5% too little is better than 5% too much. That may mean reducing the pace of your tempo run by a few seconds per mile, doing one less speed work repitition than planned, cutting back that long, slow run by 1 mile.
Little tweaks like these mean you can live to fight another day feeling recovered, refreshed and raring to go.
Read more here.
There is always a strong temptation to think that just churning out the miles at the same slow pace is the best approach to training. I mean, if you are trying to become a better runner, then more and more running is best, right?
Well, not exactly. Building an endurance base is clearly important, but as with most things in life, the key issue is quality over and above quantity.
The best approach is to blend different types of run – long slow distance, tempo, speed work, hill work – not only to work your muscles and aerobic system in different ways, but also to avoid the monotony and boredom. An additional benefit of blending different sorts of runs is that it may reduce the possibility of developing injuries.
According to fellow marathon runner Owen Barder, training at different paces is the most important of his 7 effective habits for marathon training.
So before you head out for your next run, think to yourself, what is my aim for this session? Am I going out just for a run? Is it just running miles for miles sake? We are all pretty time poor and so we need to make the best use of this precious resource.
Running is important to us all, so let’s make the most of it.