How to running Information

Too many people have the misconception that running has to be hard work. This tiny detail prevents many people from taking up the sport and leading a much better, healthier life. Afterall, we would all like to lose a bit of flab and live a little longer and running can help you do this. The saying ‘no pain, no gain, is nonsense. Believe me.

Calories

The fact of the matter is, if you have little time to exercise, running is for you. It burns more calories than any other exercise minute for minute. If you ran 1 mile, you would burn 100kcal. This could take anything from 6-10 minutes. Compare this with cycling, where you would have to cycle 3-4 miles to produce the same result. Running also gives the heart a better work out too, helping you become more fitter. The good news is, you don’t have to run fast to burn these calories because you are still covering the same distance.

Running also improves your metabolism, you will burn calories at an elevated rate for hours after running. This fine sport will also build more muscle at a faster rate than swimming and other sports. Muscle is what burns calories, in fact, muscle burns 10x more calories a day than fat. As running produces plenty of muscle, this is what you want to do.

Train, Don’t Strain

To become fit from running, you have to elevate your heart rate and so, produce a “training effect”. To do this, you don’t, and shouldn’t run as fast as possible. In fact, you should run at 60% of your maximum heart rate. Your maximum heart rate or (MHR), is your heart rate when you are exercising as hard as you can. And it doesn’t matter who you are, as long as your in that 60% zone, your body will benefit. In fact, the only sport better than running for fitness is cross country skiing, and let’s face it, who has both the snow and money!?

Some common misconceptions about running:

• That it ‘damages joints’. Research has shown that bone density increases with running, thus preventing bone disease.
• Running can give you ‘heart problems’. False, as long as you are in the 60% zone or go at your own pace, only benefits can result.
• Running makes women ‘bulky’. This is impossible as a females hormones simply prevent this from happening.

Some benefits of running:

• Boosts the immune system.
• Helps prevent diabetes.
• Helps prevent obesity.
• Improves appearance.
• Improves digestion.
• Improves lung efficiency.
• Improves psychological well-being.
• Improves quality of life.
• Improves quality of sleep.
• Improves strength and endurance.
• Increases HDL cholesterol and lowers LDL cholesterol.
• Increases life expectancy.
• Reduces risk of cancers.
• Reduces risk of heart disease.
• Reduces risk of high blood pressure.
• Slows aging.
• Strengthens bone, tendons and ligaments.

For more information on running for beginners, please visit: www.Running4Beginners.Co.Uk

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Cross country running has the highest rate of injuries of all high school sports. The injury rate is even higher for girls than for boys. The extremely high injury rate is caused by asking runners to train and race in the same week. Most coaches know that you have to run very fast in practice to run very fast in races and the fastest way to train is to run intervals or fartlak, a series of short very fast bursts of running interspersed with slow jogging.

Training is done by running very fast on one day, have your muscles feel sore on the next day, and not running fast again until your muscles feel fresh. The faster you run, the longer it takes to recover. Most high school runners take at least a week to recover from the soreness caused by a race. The coach typically takes them to a race on Saturday and asks them to run intervals on Monday or Tuesday, before they have recovered from the race. They are either injured by that interval session or else they are injured by racing the next Saturday, before their leg muscle have recovered from the interval session. If they run fast in races and slowly all the time in practice, they are less likely to be injured, but more likely to run slowly in races.

The most effective way to prevent injuries is for a coach to set up at least two teams. Let each team race on alternate weeks, so each runner races on one week and trains fast twice in the next week.

Dr. Gabe Mirkin has been a radio talk show host for 25 years and practicing physician for more than 40 years; he is board certified in four specialties, including sports medicine. Read or listen to hundreds of his fitness and health reports at http://www.DrMirkin.com

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Biomechanical assessment

Running with an injury or over-training? Often it is best to go back to basics

Injuries can affect us all regardless of age, sex or ability. But can we manage or limit the number of times we get injured? We can by going back to basics.

But we are not talking about fitness levels and stretching. Instead we mean back to biomechanics.

By assessing, on a regular basis, your biomechanics you can help eliminate and prevent a number of injuries and problems that athletes suffer from. The body compensating for weak links can cause restriction that in turn can cause pain and injury.

Calf and hamstring injuries are commonly caused by a tight sciatic nerve. The muscles provide a protective spasm to the nerve during locomotion and if stretched or loaded sufficiently the muscles can spasm enough to cause themselves to tear - or cramp up - which can feel like a tear. By mobilising the nerve it releases tension in the muscles and reduces the likelihood of this event.

Tight calves
TIGHT calves can cause over pronation. The dorsi-flexion (moving the ankle upwards) is not available from the ankle joint due to the tight calves, so it has to come from the sub talar joint. It comes as part of the pronation mechanism though and so increases the amount of pronation as well. This causes shin related injuries as well as knee and Achilles problems.

Remember that tight calves are often from a tight sciatic nerve, so by mobilising the nerve, we can help with preventing and normalise these injuries.

The effects our biomechanics have on our body and the vicious circle of injury and pain it can cause is shown again when discussing your hips and pelvis which are so important to our running but generally overlooked until the athlete is in severe pain or in fact injured.

Rotated pelvis
A ROTATED pelvis can go unnoticed for many years until the compensations start to cause problems. Typically a leg length discrepancy (LLD) can result from a rotated pelvis and the leg must compensate for this. It’ll either flatten the foot (pronate it), bend the knee more, or drop the hip more. Pronation will increase the load on the leg (see ‘Tight calves’ section), and dropping the hip will increase the the spasm to the glutes / piriformis ‘prophylactically’, in other words preventatively, (and also if necessary), then we are helping to reduce all of the above.

Assess yourself
AS a result of one of the largest studies in biomechanics by Galileo Health and distributed by HumanLab Sports we can all benefit from assessing our biomechanics, in the comfort of our own home. You do not need to be a clinician as they have developed a CD ROM software program that helps you assess yourself with the software prescribing the exercises needed to remove the problems and in turn prevent or normalise the body from developing them in the future.

As part of the program is injury prevention the CD takes you through a series of core stability work educating you on how to engage your core and to engage it while doing peripheral movements, so it becomes second nature to you when running.

It finishes off with the final section on the trunk and torso exercises.

Benefits of biomechanics
SOME athletes out there might not feel the need to help prevent a problem they don’t feel they have. So let’s look briefly at some of the other benefits biomechanics has on your performance. A tight sciatic nerve or tight piriformis (hip) can affect your stride length, your knee drive and your power output.

A tight sciatic nerve can affect your quadriceps output by as much as 15 per cent. The effect of biomechanics for the professional athlete and the novice for injury prevention or performance is a must have tool. It will help you prevent injuries, enjoy your running and help with your performance.

The program used in helping address any issues you may have now or in the future is worth having. But it doesn’t stop there.

It can be used as a training guide to indicate that you may be over-training or that a new technique or training plan is causing you problems.

GO AND take a look at the website www.humanlabsports.com
and see what you think. The CD-ROM is priced at only $39.10

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