It's week three of our new feature, Court Rules, and we hoped you've enjoyed hearing from Harvard distance runner Courtney Smith. Last week, Courtney shared some of her go-to nutrition tips and meals.
Our question this week comes from Doug Petrick, an Upper Saint Clair coach...
Courtney Smith says...
By nature of our sport, we obviously prioritize running during training sessions. However, it is important not to completely neglect the strength and flexibility aspect too because doing so can lead to injuries, which prevents us from running in the first place. There is no perfect exercise or routine that will guarantee freedom from injury. The point of doing strength and flexibility is simply to decrease risk. Many exercises do this by fixing imbalances, improving biomechanics or working to reduce breakdown in form upon fatigue.
Any amount of ancillary work is better than none, but I try to do something every day. Running asks a lot of our muscles so it is important to treat them well. Dynamic stretches can help prepare your muscles in a way specific to the movements you are about to perform, while keeping you warm and increasing your range of motion. In high school, we did a set of dynamic stretches including iron cross and leg swings before every run.
Photo by Patty Morgan
In college, we do something similar called "Active Isolated Flexibility". This involves holding each stretching positions for a few seconds, releasing, then repeating a couple of times. This allows just enough time to feel the stretch without causing the muscles to protectively contract as a stretch reflex. The key is to contract opposing muscles so that the one being stretched can and we use a rope to assist the last part of the stretch.
We also do some type of strength routine every day. This usually involves a medicine ball, or body weight exercises like lunges, planks, bridges and push-ups. Twice a week, after our hardest workout days we also do a lift routine with exercises like squats, pullups or step ups. Lifting takes more time to recover from so we do them after workouts to keep our hard days hard and our easy days easy.
When doing a strength routine you should identify whether the purpose is to try to maintain or to increase strength. Many times it's only necessary to reach and maintain a certain ability level to prevent injury risk because of diminishing returns past that point. For instance, the difference in benefit to your running between being able to do twenty pushups and four hundred pushups might not be worth it if it comes at the expense of you neglecting some other aspect of your training. If the purpose is to increase strength though, you need to progress the exercise over time as you adapt and get stronger. Some ways to progress include increasing your intensity, increasing length of each exercise, or increasing weight. Say your goal is to reach twenty pushups, you could start by doing four sets of five and keep progressing until you can do twenty straight.
As with any goal, breaking your strength goal into smaller pieces makes it easier to stay motivated. We often get overwhelmed by the thought of doing something we don't currently think of ourselves as capable of doing. However, when you can logically see the steps to getting there it makes it seem more realistic and is easier to stay motivated. It seems much more manageable because each day you only have to do what you are capable of and can get positive reinforcement along the way.
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