Hey Everyone
I hope you are all well and enjoying the last throws of summer if we can call it that.
So in this latest blog I wanted to share the beginning of the journey that my wife Charlie has set out on this summer as she plans to run the TCS London Marathon in 2024 for the wonderful charity that is Children with Cancer. Its a charity that is close to our hearts as we lost a close family member to Burkitts Lymphoma earlier this year. It would be wonderful and she would be so so appreciative if you could support her fundraising with this amazing charity.
I wanted to share the importance of preventative care as we think about embarking on any event that will test our cardiovascular, strength and endurance capabilities.
As for Charlie I wanted her to work on some foundational components that I would want all my runners to go through to help prevent the onset of an injury. So highlighted below are some of the key factors.
1: Strength is key for runners. We are hopefully starting to understand the importance of strength training for all runners. Amongst the many benefits it helps offload the chances of stress fractures, increases power, speed and offloads the demands on our joints.
2: Look after your tissues: This is one that I picked up from the elite marathon runners at London. They prioritise tissue hygiene and bodywork sessions. Sometimes up to 3 times a week they are getting hands on work to look after their muscular and fascial health through the competitive season. Their mindset is preventative rather than reactive and I get it as its their career so they cant afford to get injured. Research has shown that when we maintain tissue hygiene then the forces that get transmitted through our bodies get absorbed so much more efficiently and help dissipate the demand on our skeletal system. That ultimately lends itself to decreasing arthritic advancement to our joints.
3: Static stretching is not a good strategy to use before you run. In fact you are more likely to strain a muscle. What is important is to prime the nervous system and the our joints for activity. So more dynamic joint motions with resistance where joints act and muscle react is so much more beneficial. It promotes joint position sense, joint and muscle reaction time and increases blood flow to how tissues.
4: Use technology to assist you. They are now great products on the market that record data such as heart rate variability and sleep patterns. They can help inform us on when to maybe train or train more for recovery. If we are red lining it all the time with our training then this constant stress will tip us into de-training. Intuitively we will feel that our legs feel tired, you haven’t got much to give, you feel weak and you don’t feel like you are making gains. This is a good time to review and tweak your programming. Simple things like. Light low heart rate runs while focusing on nasal breathing, going for bodywork, reduce blue light exposure at night which will promote better quality sleep will help with what I see as smart training. Its in the recovery where the magic happens and sets you up for a good training session.
So these are some of the strategies that I have implemented with Charlie. Once a week we do some tissue work either using fasical soft tissue work, active release technique, low level laser therapy and myofascial cupping. I also get her to go through a dynamic warm up that she does before and after all her runs.
I would like to share with you a version of the dynamic warm up that I get her to do.
So lets change our mindset and lets move to that preventative self care strategy so we can train with more efficiency and help prevent the onset of an injury occurring. We don’t want to miss out on those big days where memories and achievements are made.
Till next time.
Mario
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