Discover how to run further than your husband

Lets be honest, the reason most of us start off at a boot camp or lace up that dirty old pair of running shoes is to lose weight. Sure we may pass it off as ‘getting fit’ or ‘toning up’ but what really keeps us coming back is that seemingly elusive concept of weight loss. Given that our ultimate goal will be to keep the weight off and, that exercising is the best weight manager, we have to keep our body in form such that we can exercise.  I believe two things ensure that can happen: (i) that we enjoy the exercise we chose and, (ii) that we don’t get injured when we exercise.

Given that running is a very popular method of exercise we are going to use this as our example of a type of exercise that you might enjoy (the principles stated here can and should be applied to exercise in general).

This leaves us discussing how to stay injury free when you take up running (again!).  I want to cover TWO points here:

Setting a realistic goal

Far too often we set a goal based off a time that we want to achieve (maybe to run 10K in less than an hour) or, one that a friend (one we probably used to run with) has been able to accomplish.  Even if you run a great race, such expectations will likely rob you of better performance and leave you feeling bad about the time that you achieve.  Too ambitious of a goal will leave you out of gas in the latter portion of the race, and too soft a goal won’t challenge you enough to train.

If you are looking to learn how to best set a goal for yourself contact me here.

Proper progression
Running is great for the heart and lungs yet, rather taxing on the joints of your body.  It might be that you even know a runner who has had knee pain with running; likely they progressed their training schedules based off their heart and lungs not their joints.  This is one of the most detrimental mistakes that any exerciser can make and I see it all the time.  Ironically, exercise progression is very simple to properly set up however; the individual rarely performs it consistently.  This brings me back to the first two points that I made, exercise has to be fun – or as I usually say “on the positive side of bearable”.  Such exercise as playing basketball with your kids, rolling around on the floor, yoga or even a properly periodized strength training program offer the benefit of properly supplementing many exercise training programs, even running!

For more information regarding proper exercise progression for your own training schedule contact me here.