Blog

by Jenny Hadfield

Want to run faster while using less energy? Here’s how to train your body to be a more efficient machine.

Here are three simple ways to improve your running efficiency.

Get Strong. It’s not uncommon for runners to acquire muscle imbalances that create more work for the body when we ask it to run or move (inefficiency). In fact, even runners that strength-train regularly can fall victim to muscle weakness if they’re not addressing the imbalances directly.

For example, prolonged sitting can cause the glute medius on both sides to weaken or shut off, causing instability and lateral shifting in the hips. This weakness hinders your running form via wasted lateral movement and can also cause overuse injuries like Iliotibial Syndrome and other issues down the chain.

The key is to not only include the typical functional multi-joint exercises for runners (squats, lunges), but to also include the more simple exercises (like the clam) that might not seem like they’re doing much but are helping you activate and strengthen a weak, inactive muscle. Here is a list of exercises that will help balance your body strength and better stabilize to run more efficiently with less wear and tear.

• Planks (standard, mountain climbers, side plank raises)
• Squats (single and double leg)
• Lunges
• Clams
• Push Ups
• Row with resistance tube or weight
• The Bridge (with both feet on the ground or single leg)

Get your power on. Adding plyometrics into your regular routine will boost strength and speed by improving the elasticity of the muscle via the stretch-shortening cycle. That is, when the muscle is stretched before an explosive contraction, like bending through the knee before a single leg jump, it contracts more powerfully and quickly.

Because these exercises are explosive in nature, it is best to weave them into your program after you have established a solid base of strength-training, once per week, and in rotation with your strength-training program. Perform these exercises after your runs to focus on good form, as performing plyometrics with sloppy form can quickly lead to injury. Here are three plyometric exercises for runners. By the way, plyometrics are a little like child’s play once you get the hang of it.

1. Power skips: Keeping your arms in running form, skip for a total of 20 on each leg, focusing on landing lightly on the balls of your feet and increasing the height of each skip.
2. Leg bounding: With an exaggerated running form, bound forward by jumping with each stride, focusing on an exaggerated knee lift for 20 seconds.   Walk back to recover and repeat 2-3 times.
3. Squat jumps: Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and bend into squat position with your hips back and knees bent. Tap the floor with your hands and jump up reaching your hands to straight over your head. Bend your knees as you land, touch the ground again, and repeat for 20 seconds.

Improve your stride rate. Your stride rate is simply the number of steps you take in a minute. To find it, count the number of strides on one foot for one minute and double it. The goal is to have a stride rate of around 180, or 90 per foot. If it’s much less (170) than that, it likely means you’re creating more vertical energy (oscillation), projecting more upward motion than forward, and you guessed it, wasting energy. It also means you’re employing braking forces with every stride rather than rolling quickly over the ground. The key is to practice patience while increasing your stride rate and decreasing the time you spend on the ground.

To improve your stride rate, you can run to a music mix at 180 bpm, invest in a metronome (musician’s timing device), or add the following drill to the beginning or end of your runs (it makes a great active warmup). Although this drill (and running with a faster cadence) may feel awkward at first, that just means you’re creating new neuromuscular patterns that will soon start to feel more natural. It’s important to note that when running to music or a metronome, it’s best to focus on taking shorter strides and increasing the cadence gradually. If your stride rate is 170, for example, you could set it to 174 and progress slowly from there.

Striders: On a flat straightaway, start running with short, quick strides. Gradually increase the length of your stride while maintaining quick turnover for 30 seconds. Slow down gradually, walk back to the start, and repeat a total of four to six times.

It’s important to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and optimal running efficiency isn’t, either. The good news is a little time invested with these exercises can make a significant difference in your running performance down the road.

Happy trails.

http://www.runnersworld.com/running-tips/three-simple-ways-to-improve-running-efficiency

Runner’s World

By Liam Boylan-Pett

Disappointment after a bad race shouldn’t linger in adults, right? After all, we have real things to worry about. But according to sports psychologist Michael Sachs, it’s natural to be upset by a subpar performance. Running is important to us; we feel like we have control over the outcome, so when races don’t go well, it’s a let-down. Plus, the results are so concrete.

Even though adults usually have an easier time than teens in understanding that a race is not a big deal in the larger scheme of things, they sometimes need extra help in bouncing back. Sachs offers these strategies:

• Toe the line again, especially if you feel you had a one-time bad day. Redeem yourself with another effort, pronto.
• Or, take a break and get back to training. Schedule a workout that you’ve nailed before. If it goes well, try others until you feel ready to race again.
• Visualize: Lie back and analyze the bad race. After thinking about it for a bit, Sachs says, “Press the reset button.” Then visualize a good race. Finally, think ahead to your next race and how you plan to do there.
• Sachs says a symbolic cleansing can help adults as well as teens: Flush, burn or bury a bad result.

Runner’s World

Ask Coach Jenny

By Jenny Hadfield

Here’s how to improve your pace on all your runs—even the easy ones—without getting hurt or burnt out.

Question:  I’m training for a marathon next season and I find that whenever I push harder I fail to improve or end up hurt. How do I train to improve my time? Thanks much! —Natalie

This is an email I received from a reader turned personal-coaching client last year. Her name has been changed, but all the details are real. I’m sharing this with you because her training story is not unique. Natalie’s intentions were great, but the way she was going about putting her training together was causing her trouble.

I’m also sharing this with you because in one season, with a few tweaks to her training regimen, she’s gone from failing to improve to making remarkable progress. Take a look at her stats:

Easy Effort Runs six months ago: 11:20
Easy Effort Runs now: 10:14

Long Run Pace then: 11:45
Long Run Pace now: 11:00

And, Natalie has improved the pace at which she is able to run at her redline threshold (also known as lactate threshold) by 45 seconds per mile. When you raise your redline, you can run faster at easier effort levels for longer stretches of time.

You might be thinking, “Wow, what kind of crazy workouts was she doing to improve like that?” But truly, it’s more about the workouts she wasn’t doing. Here are the three simple changes I made to help Natalie improve her performance this season.

Keep it simple. With all the talk—especially on social media and blogs—about new workouts, it’s easy to get caught up in switching around your workouts to fit in with everyone else’s plans. This can be a fun way to gain overall fitness, but when you’re training for an endurance race, it’s better to go with a few workouts repeated regularly and to progress them as your body adapts. If you don’t give your body time to adapt to new stimuli, the frequent changes can cause more harm than good.
How to do it: Instead of changing workouts every week, I assigned only two hard effort workouts—a tempo run and an interval workout—and had Natalie focus on learning how to run these at the right effort. She ran one hard workout, either a tempo run or intervals, once per week. She started with a tempo run that included five-minute repeats at threshold effort, and by the end of the 20-week training season, she built up to twenty minutes at that same effort. For her intervals, she started with one minute at her red zone effort above her threshold and finished the season running two to three minutes at this same effort. Keeping the workouts consistent from week to week helped Natalie learn to run at the right effort levels, and she only took on slightly tougher versions of those workouts every three or four weeks.

Find your flow. When I develop a custom training plan, I look at a runner’s overall heath, injury history and risk, past races, running schedule, work life, family, sleep habits, and many other variables. In order for a plan to work for you, it’s got to flow with your life, your health, and your body. A plan for a 25-year-old will look much different than one for a 45-year-old. Start by taking an honest look at the stress in your life and how your body responds to workouts, then plot a program that allows you to train, recover, and adapt.
How to do it: Natalie was doing two high-intensity interval (HIIT) workouts per week—one running, one cross-training—on back-to-back days, and she’d go into her long runs feeling drained. I changed her schedule to include only one HIIT workout per week (running), added strength workouts instead of more cardio, and plugged in one easy run during the week and one long run, plus a yoga class and a full recovery day. If you’re exhausted, you need to change the flow of your workouts. Natalie’s body was able to improve with this recipe because she was able to recover, which allowed her body to adapt to the workload and push harder as she improved.

Run by effort rather than pace. The final step was in teaching Natalie how to train by effort rather than pace. It took a few weeks for her to learn to let her pace be the outcome of her workout, rather than her guide, and once she did, she was able to fully embrace the purpose of every workout. In doing so, her body was training in the optimal zone consistently and able to progress through the season.
How to do it: I broke the effort goals into three simple zones (see below). Her easy and long runs were at a conversational Yellow Zone. This is the zone where you can talk in full sentences. Tempo runs were done in the Orange Zone, an effort level where you can hear your breathing, but only talk in one to two word responses—it feels like it’s just outside your comfort zone. And the intervals were done in the Red Zone, a hard effort where you are running fast but in control, and your breathing is labored. There’s no talking in the Red Zone.

Improvement comes from finding a balance between stress and recovery that leads to adaptation. The key is to find the right recipe for you.

http://www.runnersworld.com/running-tips/three-ways-to-get-faster-in-a-single-season