Archive for the ‘Running Workouts’ Category

You exercise so intensely that your muscles burn and you gasp for breath. Then you slow down for a minute or two, catch your breath, and then go very fast again. This training technique has been used in all endurance sports since the 1920’s. Now George Brooks of the University of California at Berkeley has shown why interval training makes you a better athlete (American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, June 2006).

Inside each muscle cell are mitochondria, the little furnaces that burn fuel for energy. A major fuel for your muscles during exercise is the sugar, glucose. In a series of chemical reactions, glucose is broken down step by step, with each step releasing energy. When enough oxygen is available, the glucose releases all of its energy until only carbon dioxide and water remain; these are blown off through your lungs. However, if not enough oxygen is available, the chemical reactions stop at lactic acid which accumulates in the muscles and spills over into the bloodstream. Lactic acid makes muscles acidic and causes a burning feeling. This recent research shows that lactic acid is the most efficient source of energy for muscles. Anything that helps muscles to break down lactic acid faster will make you a better athlete because it will increase your endurance and allow you to move faster when you are tired.

Since lactic acid is burned for energy in the mitochondria, anything that enlarges the mitochondria builds a bigger furnace and helps to increase endurance. Lactic acid is carried from the cells into the mitochondria by special proteins called lactate transporter molecules, so anything that increases these molecules will build endurance. An enzyme called lactic acid dehydrogenase is needed to start the reaction, so anything that increases this enzyme will also help. Interval training does all three: it enlarges the furnace (mitochondria), increases lactic acid transporter molecules, and increases the amount of lactic acid dehydrogenase.

Before reading this article, please understand that there is no such thing as "perfect" running form. Since everyone has different limb lengths, varying muscle fiber sizes and angles, diverse masses, and separate running distance requirements, no single athlete will run the same. But there are *characteristics* of a good runner that remain fairly constant from person to person. Allow me to introduce you to four, and include a drill to improve each.

1. Increase knee range of motion during the swing phase. This means that your right knee should be more flexed (towards your butt) when your right thigh is flexed forward during the run, as opposed to your right knee being more extended (away from butt). Same goes for the left, of course. Think of it this way – if you were swinging a weight attached to the end of a stick, you could move the weight faster with less effort if the stick were shorter. In this case, the stick is your leg, and the weight is your foot. By having your knee (the stick) more bent (or shorter), you are able to move the weight (your foot) much faster with less effort. The result will not only be a faster swing time (meaning a faster foot turnover), but also reduced fatigue in achieving the desired stride length.

Drill: Heel-to-butt kicks. During your normal run, begin to exaggerate knee flexion, touching the butt with the heel during each stride. Do 20 touches for both the right and left legs, then continue in your normal gait pattern.

2. Maintain flexible quadriceps and hip flexors. These are the muscles along the front of your thigh that act to straighten the leg. If they are tight, insufficient flexibility can inhibit your ability to fully extend the leg in the push-off phase of the running gait.

Drill: Platform stretch. Ideally, your pelvic bone should be tilted backwards when stretching the quadriceps and hip flexors. To achieve this, find a platform or elevated surface that is approximately at knee height or slightly higher. Facing away from the platform, and standing on your right leg, bend your left knee and lock your left foot, shoelaces down, onto the surface. Hold 15-30 seconds, then switch.

3. Deliberately focus on pushing backwards with each step. This will not only incorporate your gluteal and hamstring muscles in the push-off phase of the running gait, but also keep your center of gravity consistently rolling forward. Rather than focusing on using the muscles around the knee to provide the driving force, focus on running from the hips.

Drill: Lean-fall-run. Stand completely still and as tall as possible. Without bending the knees, let the entire body lean forward until you "fall" toward the ground and are forced to take your first step forward. Transition directly into a short 10-20 yard run, continuing to lean forward and push backwards with the hips.

4. Avoid excessive ankle and hip flexion. Do not bend your knees or flex your ankles excessively during the landing phase. While it may seem that this decreases joint impact forces, there is no empirical evidence that runners who bend the knees more have less injuries than runners who do not. However, there is evidence of increased time spent in contact with the ground, which decreases your elastic rebound from the ground and the overall power of each stride. You will naturally avoid excessive knee and ankle flexion if your focus on minimizing footstrike time.

Drill: Cadence counts. During your run, count the number of right footstrikes achieved in a span of 20 seconds. There should be 30 or more, indicating a cadence of 90 or higher. Increased cadence indicates decreased ground contact time.

Focus on making these changes to your gait pattern, and you will notice a marked increase in efficiency and economy. As you prepare for race season and design your weekly and monthly training plans, look into the triathlete training specials offered by Pacific Elite Fitness, at www.pacificfit.net.

If there is one thing I didn’t want to do as a young man was loose weight. My nick name at school was Stick. Others were Skinny Ribs and Skelator. There were a couple of reasons why I was so thin. One was simply because I was full of energy and always running around, and the other must have been down to me having an ultra fast metabolism. Oh how I hated those nicknames back then, but I would have loved to have them back once I hit my mid 40’s as I became as fat as a barrel. Alas, I was to become a couch potato and my poor ole metabolism began to slow down with age. But I did eventually find a solution to the middle age spread and that was simply by running to lose weight.

The thing I like so much about running to lose weight is that it’s easy. Apart from decent footwear there are no machines, gyms, or other fitness expenses to suffer. It can be practiced at your own pace, in your own time, at a schedule that suits you. There is a downside though which is I sometimes have to miss my run if there’s a torrential downpour or worse still a snow storm. But even with the unpredictable elements, there are very few days lost to inclement weather conditions.

Running to lose weight and to get into shape gets a bad wrap from some fitness gurus as being hard on the joints. No one can argue that poor footwear slapping down on hard concrete won’t take its toll over time, but with a good quality pair of running shoes and a nice grass surface, no one is going to be turning into a cripple overnight. As I’m neither practicing for nor running a marathon here, the harm is done by this form of exercise. 20 minutes of running or gentle jogging every other day has seen a healthy steady weigh loss with this Fatty Arbuckle and as a bonus to shedding those pounds, I feel absolutely fantastic too.

On average I lost around 2 Kg a week for 3 months then the weight loss became much more gradual after that. My obvious physical appearance changed in a relatively short space of time which impressed my neighbor so much that he now accompanies me on my runs most days, and the weight is dropping off him just as it did with me.

I will just finish by saying that I have not been on any kind of diet regime. I’ve always enjoyed my meat and 2 veg and continue to eat as much, if not a little more, than I did before I began running to loose weight. Having said that, I’ve never been a fast food junkie, nor do I have a sweet tooth, but I do get stuck into big helpings at meal times. So for me, loosing weight was not so much about putting less in my mouth and getting more exercise, but more to do with just the exercise bit. Everyone is different, and only you know what you have to do, but what I can say is that running to lose weight has really worked for me and my neighbor Roger D.

Bye the way, if you don’t fancy the outdoor jogging scene, you can always use a treadmill instead. Just remember, if you’re serious about losing weight, there are only 2 times when you really need to exercise ? One is when you want to, and the other is when you don?t! Get out of that one if you can!

One coach is fed up with the way kids feel about running, and he’s not going to sit back and take it any more. Rick Karboviak, a cross-country & track coach in northwest Minnesota, has been struggling with the reasons why a majority of kids don’t want to run for competition, and even training for competition. "I think the mindset of today’s kids is that you have to run 5 to 6 miles or more per day when you go out for the sports of track or cross-country." Nothing could be further from the truth, Karboviak says. He feels that the current marathon-based principles used to train young kids aren’t working, and its keeping kids away from joining. "Kids hear horror stories of cross-country runners going on 10 to 12 mile runs, when the most that they run is 3.1 miles in a fast-paced race. It is these horror stories and legendary tales of past running methods that keeps today’s mostly inactive kids away from the sport." Karboviak feels that kids can run less mileage, do it in a high intensity, short duration format, and still improve fitness levels. He feels that coaches need to know of these proven methods of short burst, high intensity training, and how to apply it to today’s multi-sport athlete. "In most regions of the country, there aren’t many pure runners out there, many of them do the sports of track or cross-country as a complement to their other sports. Long distance runs at slow levels may actually hinder their performance in other sports, so taking this high intensity approach is more akin to their other sports they play." The result? Karboviak recorded a 20% increase in race-pace fitness levels, based off of an athlete’s 1000m pace times in their races during his cross-country team’s season in 2005. "The most any kid ran during the season was about less than 25 miles in a week. We had purpose behind our training, not just logging a bunch of endless miles in the hopes of getting faster. We trained fast to get fast, period."

He’s now written a book on his unique training method, called "Endure!". It covers his low-mileage philosophy & reasons why he applies it. There’s also interesting chapters on strength training methods for runners, such as using the new kettlebell style of training for improved running power & control.

Already since it’s launch this summer, coaches in the US, Canada, and even France have purchased the book, making an international impact in it’s first month. The training methods he uses in the book are being chronicled on a weekly series of articles during the cross-country season on a membership-based sports training website, Sportspecific.com.

The website for the e-book is http://endure.speeddialcoach.com. Karboviak’s independent training website for his day job as a fitness coach is www.speeddialcoach.com.

Rick Karboviak is a coach for cross-country and track programs at Thief River Falls Lincoln High School, in Thief River Falls, MN. He’s also started his independent training company, Speed Dial Coach, found at http://speeddialcoach.com.

You have to run to lose weight!!!

If u see that a diet do no results with your weight you should do exercises that help you doing that. One of the easiest and healthy is "running". All u need is just a pair of shoes, a t-shirt, pants, and a few calories to burn.

To lose fat, you need to eat fewer calories or burn more energy. Your body stores the excess calories that you consume as body fat. So if you want to reduce your body fat, you need either to consume fewer calories, or burn more energy. Any weight-loss programme is only going to succeed if it delivers one or both of these.

Running serves as an excellent workout choice to lose weight and keep in shape. It helps a great deal in getting rid of your flabby abs and achieve a beautiful body that you had always craved for. In fact, today, health experts also recommend running for weight loss. The results won’t be magical but definitely far more effective, when compared to other forms of physical workouts. Running about 25 to 30 miles per week leads to a loss of about 2800 calories.

You don’t need to necessarily go in for fast pace running to lose weight. Rather, focus on long distance running at a slow pace, to fasten your weight loss program. People tend to diet to shape up their bodies, but it is definitely not a good idea to control weight. In fact, on the contrary, it is advisable to forego the very thought of going on a diet and rather make an attempt to run to lose weight. So, lose weight by running, because that is a healthy way of managing your weight and also it will ensure the glow on your face.

When you want to lose weight running you should take care of a few advices that will help you about the administration of the food and will have instantly results. The most of trainers recommend this and say that is the healthiest way to lose weight.

About the Author

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