Top 5 Ways to Keep Running and Improve Performance

1. Strong Glutes- Your glutes are the stabilizers of your lower extremity while running. Running performance and injury prevention starts and ends with strong glutes. With strong glutes, the position of your hips, knees, ankles are better controlled decreasing loading forces and improving efficiency. There are many exercises that target your glutes but a few of the best are sideways band walks and clamshells.

2. Proprioception- Proprioception is the system that controls your balance and position in space. High levels of proprioception help decreased falls, sprains, and strains. The more honed your system the less likely one is to get injured. The best way to improve proprioception is balance activities both with eyes closed and on unstable surfaces such as a BOSU.

3. Cardio Base- Cardio base is training your cardiovascular system to reach higher levels. There are many ways to achieve this, with one the most popular being heart rate training. Another Mother Runner has a great blog on this subject as well and it can be found here Anothermotherrunner. The idea is training at appropriate heart rates for your conditioning will cause physiologic changes in your body, including increased capillary growth and cellular activity resulting in increased performance.

4. Mobility- Increasing soft tissue and fascial mobility decreases loading and compressive forces through peripheral joints. Foam rolling your lower extremities is the most popular and effective way to do this.

5. Flexibility- Many runners have gotten away from old fashioned flexibility training. There is benefits to remaining flexibility as a runner. This includes decreased muscle strains and better performance with fatigue. Straight line stretching paired with dynamic stretching, and foam rolling is the best way to achieve this. Please reach out to an amazing physical therapist at Atlas Physical Therapy today to get help or more information.