Posts

The Best Core Strengthening Exercises for Runners (with Video)

 

For many runners (and people in general) “core exercises” are little more than some crunches or sit ups.

Yet your abdominal muscles are just one component of your core, and those crunches/sit ups aren’t doing much for your lower back, hips, glutes, or obliques.

As runners, a strong core is vital for improved running performance and resistance to injury.

And to be blunt, doing crunches isn’t enough.

So here are 5 of the best core strengthening exercises for runners out there, and if you do them consistently, I guarantee you’ll see the payoff sooner rather than later!

Enter your name and email below, and I’ll send you a free PDF guide of the exercises described in this video.

Diz Runs With… Patricia Lopez


On today’s run, I’m joining Patricia Lopez for a few easy miles. Patricia is a bit unique in that she is a running coach and a yoga instructor. She believes there are many benefits for runners that are able to incorporate regular yoga practice into their training schedule, and I think she’s right.

richmond

We talked a lot about the yoga over the course of our conversation, but yoga wasn’t the only subject we talked about. Here are some of the highlights:

  • The imbalances that many runners have.treepose
  • The mental challenge of running.
  • The struggle of slowing down in the fast paced world that we live in.
  • Why being inflexible is a terrible excuse for not doing yoga.
  • Some of the many benefits of yoga–beyond just the stretching.

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of yoga, I can’t encourage you enough to reach out to Patricia and touch base with her. She is a wealth of knowledge not only in terms of the yoga, but in how the yoga effects your whole body, mind, and soul.

On the Web–Time 4 Training

On Facebook–Time 4 Training

On Twitter–@TIME4TRAININGUK

 


Join my Tribe!

There’s always room for more members of the tribe!

Both the Facebook group and the newsletter provide opportunities that can’t be found anywhere else. You can interact with fellow tribe members on the Facebook group, and stay up to date with future guests on the show via the newsletter, as well as getting some other freebies and offers that aren’t available anywhere else.

If you’ve got questions about either/both, just let me know!


The Benefits of Strength Training for Runners

Unknown-10

Strength training is something that many recreational runners, and even a lot of semi-serious runners, tend to omit from their training regimens.

The prevailing feeling of many runners is that to get faster, one simply needs to run farther and run faster.

And the prevailing feeling is wrong.

The Many Benefits of Strength Training

In most sports, the notion that lifting weights and getting stronger will improve performance is widely accepted. Football players spend hours in the weight room, as do hockey players, basketball players, and even baseball players.

So why do runners think we wouldn’t see a benefit from regular resistance training?

Here are just a few of the many benefits of strength training that runners can see if they commit to regularly doing resistance training.

  • Stay Healthy–Believe it or not, endurance runners have one of the highest rates of injury of any athletes. This may sound crazy at first, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Running requires that you repeat the same motion over and over and over again, sometimes for hours without a chance to recover. Any motion that is that repetitive in nature can cause muscle imbalances and overuse injuries. But regularly performing strength training exercises, runners are able to limit muscle imbalances and strengthen the muscles that are used in running, which helps to prevent them from breaking down over time.
  • Finish Stronger–Nothing is more frustrating for a runner than fading fast down the stretch (believe me!). Regular strength training helps to improve muscle endurance, so hopefully the fading will be minimized. For those of us crazies that run marathons or longer, this is especially important. Those last few miles are where you need that additional strength to make it through the finish line the most.
  • Improved Running Form–This is an addendum to the previous points, but as you fatigue your form breaks down. By working on your strength and improving muscular endurance, you’ll be able to maintain good form for a longer period of time which will help you finish stronger and stay healthy. To be clear, strength training won’t improve poor running form but it will help keep your form from breaking down over the course of a longer race.
  • Increased Metabolism–Strength training, without getting too technical, is a great metabolism booster because the effects of the exercise are felt for up to 36 hours after the workout is completed. Whereas running burns a lot of calories during activity, unless you’re really killing yourself in your workouts, running won’t keep burning a lot of calories once you finish your run. Strength training works exactly the opposite–not many calories burned during exercise but a continued burn for hours after exercise is complete. (If you want more info on the reasons this happens, shoot me a message and I’ll go into specifics.)

For most of us, we run to improve our overall health and push ourselves to new limits in terms of speed or distance.

Both of these goals are best achieved by including regular strength training to your routine.

If you’re not sure what kind of exercises are best for runners, stick around. I’ll be giving out some great ideas in the next post.

Do You Regularly Do Any Strength Training? What Does Your Routine Look Like?

 

PS–I’m working on a suggested exercise guide that I’ll be giving away to my tribe members, so if you want that just enter your best email address and I’ll get it sent out to you soon. (If you’re already in the tribe, stay patient. The guide is coming!)