But that’s all just a starting point and if you are interested in really improving your breathing then you are going to need a proven framework to help you get there.

Luckily for you, I’ve put such a framework together – and it offers you so much more than any other breathing course I’ve found. In fact, it’s a Respiratory Revolution!

Throughout this series of articles, you’ve learned about the importance of the biomechanic of breathing. Now, you’ll often hear a lot being said about strengthening your diaphragm and using it better in your breathing, but you’ve learned there are a lot more muscles involved in breathing other than your diaphragm.

Almost no one else will teach you that though, or how to actually activate those breathing muscles and your diaphragm so you can even start to strengthen them. A very high percentage of the runners I see really struggle to get even the smallest amount of activation, so how are they supposed to strengthen them and move the rib cage well to allow your diaphragm to work in the way it’s intended?

Being able to create and maintain a strong and stable breathing cylinder with a well mobilised rib cage is a fundamental and critical element of functional breathing for running, whether you are able to transition to nose breathing or not.

I cannot emphasise enough just how important this is, and most breathing courses and systems I’ve found only give this a cursory mention at best: they are missing out a crucial aspect to helping you breathe better when you run.

Calm and relaxed, but left behind…

In addition, as good as they are (and there are some amazing courses and systems available) most breathing courses you’ll come across are designed for the opposite of what you need as a runner. They teach you breathing techniques for relaxation, calm, and keeping your carbon dioxide levels low or within a level. This is fantastic for helping to reduce anxiety and bring in a calm mindfulness, but it just doesn’t help you functionally as a runner. Yes, there are elements of calm and relaxation that you need to bring to your running, and you certainly do need relaxed and well-paced breathing. 

But the reality is that as the duration and intensity of your running increases, you build up carbon dioxide in your cells and blood. If you do not learn to tolerate these higher levels, you’ll always need to slow down and you always risk inducing a feeling of panic and paradoxical breathing. This is what makes my framework different:

Functional breathing designed specifically for running

So with that, here is what you’ll learn on the RunTeach Respiratory Revolution breathing course for runners:

The Respiratory Revolution is an 8-week course, with each module becoming available

each week so you have plenty of time to practise without feeling rushed. In fact, as the course is self-paced, if it takes you 16 weeks or 20 weeks to complete, that’s absolutely fine. Once you have access to the course you have it – there is no time limit. This means you can refer back to the lessons and supporting material whenever you like.

The topics covered in the course are built on the elements that you learned about in the quick guide and articles:

• The Biomechanics Of Breathing
• The Biochemistry Of Breathing
• The Neurology Of Breathing

The topic include:

• Course introduction
• Assessments and benchmark
• Why breathing skills are needed for running well
• What is dysfunctional breathing?
• Diaphragm mobility
• Diaphragm strengthening
• The muscles of inhalation
• The muscles of exhalation
• Why nose-breathe? Discovering the benefits
• Nasal decongestion
• Learn to nose breathe and avoid the panic of air hunger
• Running specific breathing background and techniques
• Breathing Challenges throughout the course to help you learn to breathe better, more quickly

Every module has practical exercises designed to help you improve your breathing right from week 1.

There are also supporting lessons taking you through topics to help you get the most out of the course. For example, do you panic if you hold your breath? Well, I include techniques to help you get over this so that you can take full advantage of the breathing challenges and exercises.

So if you are ready to take the next step on your breathing journey, you can find the course here.

If you would prefer to work with me on a 1-2-1 basis to improve your breathing or other aspects of your running, you can contact me here.

The post Pulling it all together – A framework for better breathing appeared first on RunTeach.

In this article we are going to build on what you’ve learned in the free quick guide to breathing ebook and the first four supporting articles that expand on each topic in the book. We are now going to look at nose breathing: what it is and how it can benefit you both in your running but also in everyday life.

We’re going to begin by looking at some of the common benefits of nose breathing in general and then you’ll discover why these are important. We’ll also uncover why you may not currently want to nose breath and how to go about changing that. Finally, you’ll learn a nose breathing exercise and protocol that you can begin using right away. So, let’s get started.

Nose Breathing Benefits

Some of the common benefits often cited about nose breathing are:

• Filters the air and helps remove allergens and dust
• Warms the air
• Humidifies the air
• Pressurises the air

All of these sound great, and they are, but there is so much more that isn’t often highlighted unless you begin to dig deeper.

• Helps to induce relaxation: When you breathe through your nose the air is slightly restricted which helps to slow down your rate of breathing and encourages better regulation. This slowing down and breath regulation is what promotes relaxation.
  
  However, due to the restriction of the airflow through your nose, you may find this creates some air hunger – a feeling that you don’t have enough air coming in. This can then cause mild panic and lead you to believe that you simply can’t nose-breathe. This is particularly the case if you often suffer from a blocked nose. But you can relax as we’ll look at ways that you can get over this feeling and start to nose-breathe without the panic.
  
• Improves cognitive function: There is some research that supports improved brain function through improved breathing. Actually, the study looked at people with dysfunctional nasal breathing and measured impaired cognitive function leading to the conclusion that efficient nasal breathing helps overall cognitive health and avoids impaired cognitive function. How you breathe also influences the neuroplasticity and predictive models of your brain, so it makes logical sense to deliberately and positively influence these with efficient breathing rather than to leave it to chance.
  
• Smell is important to us in mapping out our environment in the same way as vision and hearing are. The more efficient you become as a nose breather, the more improved (in general) your sense of smell becomes. If you remember back to the article where you learned about the predictive brain, you’ll begin to understand why a good sense of smell is important in helping to provide your brain with the most helpful information it can get. There is some research that links nasal breathing to improved visuospatial awareness, particularly in a sports environment. It does this through synchronising electrical activity in the brain on a wavelength that appears to improve your visuospatial awareness.
  
• Improves the recruitment of your diaphragm which leads to more efficient breathing and is strongly linked to the biochemical aspects of breathing. A strong and well activated diaphragm has also been linked to improved midline stability, something that is very important when you are running.
  
• Increased oxygen uptake in the blood: Nose breathing is more effective at increasing oxygen uptake than mouth breathing. This is something we’ll look at in a bit more detail later on in this article, but for now it’s helpful to know that arterial pressure of oxygen in people who consistently nose breathe increased by 10% over those that don’t.
  
• Production of nitric oxide: As you breathe in through your nose, you produce a molecule called nitric oxide which helps to maintain healthy lung function and may protect against certain respiratory diseases. Nitric oxide also helps to open up your airways, maximising the available oxygen for transfer to your blood and working muscles.
  
• Dilation of blood vessels: Nose breathing helps to open up the blood vessels in your lungs that then improves the amount of oxygen being carried around the body and to your working muscles and other tissues.
  
• Improved blood distribution in your lungs: The nitric oxide produced when you nose breathe helps to improve how your blood is distributed throughout your lungs which has been shown to improve blood by up to 24%. This is particularly the case with the upper areas of your lungs where gravity may otherwise present a challenge to the gas exchange process. Essentially, nose breathing is helping to improve the diffusion of blood from your lungs across into your blood.

I could continue with many more functions of the nose, but this is enough for us to start looking at a little more detail into some of these things so you can begin reaping the benefits of breathing through your nose in a more consistent manner.

Increased Oxygen

Let’s start with increased oxygen because this can seem a bit at odds with the restricted airflow of nose breathing compared to mouth breathing. However, with the help of a small formula it’s easy to see why nose breathing facilitates more oxygen availability. 

When we are exercising hard it’s easier for us to take air in through the mouth because we basically get more air in than we do through the nose. However, if you also speed up the rate of your breathing, you actually end up with less available oxygen. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you are breathing through your mouth and you are breathing at the typical resting rate of between 12 and 20 breaths per minute. Let’s actually say that you are at the healthier end of this scale and you are breathing at 12 breaths per minute.

The amount of air you take in each breath that is usable is known as the tidal volume (TV), and the total amount of air taken in one minute is called your minute ventilation (MV). The typical minute ventilation is around 6 litres: that is, you take in around 6 litres of air per minute. This is represented in the formula below:

Respiratory Rate * Tidal Volume = Minute Ventilation

RR * TV = MV

12 (breaths per minutes) x TV = 6 litres

So TV must be 500ml of air per in breath:

12 x 500 = 6000ml = 6 litres

But, not all of the air you breathe in a single breath can be used for oxygen transfer. Around 150ml per breath remains in various areas of your throat, trachea, bronchi and bronchioles. This is known as dead space air and it cannot be used for gas exchange. So our tidal volume now becomes:

12 x (500 – 150) = 4200ml = 4.2 litres.

That’s 1.8 litres of air that cannot be used for oxygen exchange in the lungs.

Nose breathing generally encourages a slower breathing rate, typically between 6 and 8 breaths per minute, and at rest we are really aiming for a respiratory rate of 6. However, the amount of air coming into the nose remains the same as the mouth breather in the first example as they weren’t overbreathing, something we’ll look at next. So the total amount of air coming in in one minute is still 6 litres.

The amount of dead space air is the same as before, but our calculation now looks like this:

6 x TV = 6 litres

6 x 1000 = 6000ml = 6 litres

6 x (1000 – 150) = 5100ml = 5.1 litres

So you can clearly see that by slowing down your breath rate to around 6 breaths per minute from 12 breaths per minute, you are gaining an extra 20% of air that can be used for oxygen exchange. 

Of course the question is: “if I’m a mouth breather can I slow it down and get the same benefit?”. In theory, yes. In practice though, slowing down your breathing when just breathing through your mouth is hard to achieve on a consistent basis. You also won’t get the other benefits of nose breathing such as filtration and the very important nitric oxide.

So, nose breathing combined with slowing your respiratory rate is the preferred method of increasing oxygen in your blood. Doing exercises to help with the pacing of your breathing, such as those you learned in earlier topics in the guide and articles, will help you maintain good pacing in your breathing as your exercise intensity increases.

Over-breathing

You’ve just learned that slowing down your breathing rate can increase the available oxygen for gas exchange – something that is very important when you are running because you need to maximise the amount of oxygen that gets to your working muscles and other tissues.

So, why can’t you just take bigger breaths through your mouth to achieve the same thing? Well, apart from losing the benefits of nitric oxide you will also be breathing in too much oxygen. Not a bad thing you might think, except that it will displace the carbon dioxide in your blood (hypocapnia) and that certainly is not a good thing if it happens over longer periods (hours or days) – so you don’t want to be relying on large mouth breaths to get the oxygen you need.

To understand the issue of persistent hypocapnia (as opposed to deliberate, short term hyperventilation training for a few minutes at a time), we need to refer back to the previous article on biochemistry that included an explanation of your energy systems. If you remember, the higher the intensity of your running the harder it is for your body to get oxygenated blood to your cells. As a result, carbon dioxide builds up and eventually you will get to a point where the cells don’t work well and you’ll be forced to slow down. In practice, this is like starting your 5k race way too fast, rising quickly from aerobic to lactic and possibly to alactic, only to blow up a few minutes later and then having to settle down into a more sustainable pace in your aerobic or lower threshold zone. During this high intensity phase there is a build up of carbon dioxide, or a hypercapnic situation. This is the opposite of what happens when you over-breath, but being in a high intensity situation can force you to hyperventilate and over-breathe to compensate for the carbon dioxide build up and leave you in a carbon dioxide deficit.

As part of the normal cellular processes, the carbon dioxide that is shuttled from your cells is combined with water in the blood to form carbonic acid. The next reaction is to disassociate into H+ (hydrogen ions) and HCO3 (bicarbonate ions). This creates an alkaline buffer that neutralises changes in your blood’s acidity. When you hyperventilate or even just over-breath through large mouth breaths, you start to remove a lot of carbon dioxide. This leaves an excess of bicarbonate ions and a deficiency of hydrogen ions. At the same time, your breathing volume decreases to help restore your carbon dioxide levels. However, this will only work during short-term hyperventilation bouts as you return to normalised breathing quickly, allowing those carbon dioxide levels to settle. With continued hyperventilation or over-breathing, you end up in a constant state of hypocapnia and this impacts on your blood’s pH levels. As a consequence, your kidneys start to offload the excess bicarbonate ions to try and normalise your blood’s pH, making them work harder to maintain this fine balance.

In addition to your blood pH levels, the low level of carbon dioxide can cause other issues. Carbon dioxide is a strong catalyst for releasing oxygen from your blood into your cells, so by over-breathing you end up doing the opposite of what you may think you are doing. It is also a dilator of smooth muscles, the kind of muscle found in some of your airways. Therefore, over-breathing can actually restrict some of your airways, further reducing the effectiveness of your breathing.

Essentially, over-breathing other than when doing specific hyperventilation training exercises for a specific outcome, is going to reduce the available oxygen and hamper your running.

Carbon Dioxide Tolerance

Sticking with our carbon dioxide theme and becoming even more running specific, I just want to go back to the energy systems and the build up of carbon dioxide as your effort level increases.

You’ll remember that as you transition from your aerobic system being dominant to your lactic system becoming dominant, the level of carbon dioxide in your blood starts to build up because your system cannot pump the blood fast enough back to your lungs for the carbon dioxide to be diffused back to the lungs for exhalation. This is a state known as hypercapnia where there is excessive amounts of carbon dioxide and eventually this will help create an environment where your cells cannot perform well so you are forced to slow down so everything can begin to normalise. This feeling of not getting enough air in is called air hunger and you can actually use this state to improve balance and brain function – but that’s for another article.

The good news is that you can increase your tolerance to this CO2 build up so that you can push on for longer in this transition zone between energy systems. Ultimately, this means your speed endurance improves and therefore your race times. Even if you are not motivated by running faster and instead want better endurance, being able to operate for longer with a higher CO2 level means you are more fatigue resistant as you are overall much more efficient.

And the starting point for increasing your tolerance to higher levels of CO2 is by nose breathing, even at rest. This is because nose breathing naturally restricts the airflow by up to 50% compared to mouth breathing. Right away you are dealing with less oxygen going in and less carbon dioxide going out. This is also why you may find nose breathing, even at rest, challenging at first: you are not used to this build of CO2 and a reduction in O2 so you respond to the CO2 trigger to inhale as your brain perceives holding out as a threat. Remember that your brain is a prediction engine and the predictions it uses are shaped by every moment in your life so far. As soon as you start to train your CO2 tolerance, you are also shaping your predictive models for future reference.

So where do you start with this and how can you progress it?

1. Start with nose breathing at rest as often as you can, aiming to make it a permanent change.
2. You may find it challenging at times, so take a break but always go back to it and push yourself that little more. Nose breathing will actually help you to open up your airways (remember nitric oxide?) so persisting with it is the key.
3. Begin to build in nose breathing when you are walking, which will present more of a challenge as the CO2 will build up quicker and you may experience stronger air hunger. Again, take a break and go back to it. Each time you do this you are letting your brain know that it’s perfectly safe and you positively shape those predictive models.
4. When you are ready, try some nose breathing when you are on your easy runs. This may only be for 30 seconds to a minute at a time, but it’s all positive graining and positive reinforcement for your brain to build predictive models from and feel safe.

Nose breathing is such an important part of functional breathing, whether you are running or sitting on your sofa, that ignoring it is like ignoring speed work, strength work and other aspects of your run training.

In the next article I’m going to pull everything together and show you how you can improve your breathing in a step by step framework that also takes into account how you are feeling during some of the more challenging aspects of nose breathing, breath holds and rib cage mobilisation.

The post The Benefits Of Nose Breathing appeared first on RunTeach.

But maybe you’re the complete opposite and you love going to the gym but have found that no matter how much strength work you do, you still get those niggles and quite simply, you’re not getting any faster. 

As a runner, if you do a quick search on the Internet for reducing your injury risk and/or improving your performance, you’ll discover very quickly that “getting stronger” is the top tip from almost anyone. And I’ve got to agree with all of them: getting stronger is one of the outputs we need to develop to keep us running for longer and working towards our running goals.

Strength Is An Output

You see, strength is an output from your system. It’s the result of a whole bunch of stuff coming together and allowing your muscle fibres to contract to whatever level is needed to achieve the task. That task might be lifting a kettlebell or handling the forces of running. In all cases though, one huge element in strength is stabilising a joint as you lift, move and run. In fact, I would even argue that in our day to day lives outside of an experimental lab, joint stabilisation is one of the main things our expression of strength is doing.

They all start with trying to activate the muscles themselves. You’re given squats, lunges, deadlifts, landmine lifts, single leg exercises and much more. This can work for some people, but if the rest of your system won’t allow your muscles to activate and contract well, at best doing these exercises will just take a very long time to get any results. More often than not though, they simply won’t help you get any closer to your running goals at all.

You Are Already Superhuman!

You already have so much strength within your muscles already. Your strength, or “expression of strength” as I prefer to call it, is controlled by your brain. It’s not just to do with muscle size. You have neural inhibitors that actually block and reduce the amount of strength you can use. This is primarily a protection mechanism so you don’t injure yourself if the rest of your body and system can’t handle the forces you are generating.

A good example of this is when you have a limited quality of movement around a joint. If you can’t move well and control a joint, your brain will not allow you to exert or try to handle large forces across that joint. In other words, your ability to generate strength around that joint will be limited. This can have a cascading effect throughout the whole kinetic chain – all the other joints in your body, even if they are nowhere near the weaker joint.

Traditional strength training can work, but it usually takes a long time and a lot of patience because you are forcing the development of a skill (how to stabilise a joint) by working at the sharp end and hoping that your system will respond without you getting injured. To me, this is inefficient and completely backwards.

There Is A Better Way

The RunTeach system uses the following process to help you develop the strength and resilience you need as a runner:

Strength is the final output of the process and often doesn’t even need to be trained directly, depending on your running goals and current ability level.

By first developing the skill of joint stabilisation through working directly with your brain and nervous system, you can unlock the neural inhibitors and unlock your strength. This often happens very quickly: we’re talking minutes or hours of training as opposed to months and years of training! Longer term results will take longer, but it’s all relative to your goals and how much strength you need to be a resilient runner. 

Having developed the appropriate level of skill you need, adding endurance to that skill will enable you to run longer and faster without increasing your injury risk – essentially, you’ll be able to keep being strong for longer distances, more sessions, and at higher speeds.  Once you’ve got that strength, keeping it tends to have a very low requirement in terms of exercise and time. In fact, running just by itself can be the main maintenance factor.

If you want to find out more about this really quite jaw dropping approach to getting stronger, I would recommend attending one of our Resilient Runner Workshops. You’ll not only learn more, but will be able to actually apply it to your running right away.

The post Stop! Does Strength Work, Work? appeared first on RunTeach.

Near the end of the session I talk about my plans for Team RunTeach and how you can help me decide the future. This is an interesting time for all of us, I want to make it as exciting and beneficial for you as I can.

You can also find the video over on my Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/RunTeachUK/videos/3305275966151863/

I would love it if you could go over to my Facebook page afterwards and like the video. Also, please share with as many people as you like – thank you!

The post Live skills session – 12-05-2020 appeared first on RunTeach.

https://www.facebook.com/RunTeachUK/videos/225750762063844/

I would love it if you could go over to my Facebook page afterwards and like the video. Also, please share with as many people as you like – thank you!

The post Live skills session – integration 1 appeared first on RunTeach.

Just doing hundreds of sit ups or static plank holds won’t cut it. You gain control over your core by viewing it as an integrated system from neck to thighs, and then learning the type of activations and exercises that are most beneficial for you to do this – and that’s what this skills session is all about.

You can also find the video over on my Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/RunTeachUK/videos/244990659957344/

I would love it if you could go over to my Facebook page afterwards and like the video. Also, please share with as many people as you like – thank you!

The post Live skills session – core appeared first on RunTeach.

A lot of plans will begin to ramp things up now by increasing distance and adding in speed work. You may find that you do your longest run in this four week block. Building up time on feet and speed endurance are what this phase is all about, as it continues to build both physical and mental fatigue resistance. 

The speed work that gets added to plans is designed to challenge your energy systems and muscles in a slightly different way that you’ve been training so far. The higher intensity efforts help to force adaptations in your muscles and connective tissue, making them stronger. They also challenge your cardiorespiratory system and helps to improve your aerobic thresholds. Lots of other good stuff is happening here as well, including building mental strength and preparing you for a solid performance on marathon day. 

For me, starting to train more at my target marathon pace is important. Remember, the marathon is a long way and commands a consistent output from start to finish. To most of us that don’t run with power meters, this means a consistent pace, and that’s why setting your target pace is important. This pace will feel easy in the first half, and will become progressively harder as you go into the last third. So, getting a lot of practice at this target pace is critical to helping you find that groove on race day. To help you find your marathon pace, the McMillan calculator is a good starting point.

 Different plans will have different formats for building this in, such as sandwiching  it in between easy sections in a longer run or having fast finish long runs where the last few miles are at your marathon pace. If your plan doesn’t do this, I would recommend adding some marathon pace practice in. The easiest way of doing this is to sandwich by splitting your runs so that you do one third at easy pace, one third at marathon pace and the last third at easy pace. Start off with your mid-length runs and keep your long runs easy. If you are more experienced at marathon training, then you can do this in your long runs, or go for the fast finish option. 

When I design marathon plans for my athletes, I use the speed sessions to build lots of marathon pace practice. I use the sandwich method but tend to sandwich faster efforts in between two sections of marathon pace. I’ve found this to be very effective and is based on the speed sessions designed for my first claim club, Bournemouth AC

If you don’t already have a target marathon pace, choose one. Look through your runs in the base phase and pick a pace that is realistic and aligns with your goals. If your goal is to finish without a specific time target and simply enjoy the event, choose a pace that will allow you to do this. Don’t put yourself under unnecessary pressure. It’s easy to get carried away, especially if your training is going well. If you have a time goal, work out the pace you need to run and decide whether that’s realistic and adjust if necessary. It is likely that at the end of this phase you will reevaluate the pace following the speed work and any tempo runs.

Once you have your target marathon pace, practice it at least once per week and build up the time you run at this pace. However, you are not trying to run long distances at this pace. Remember, you can sandwich it into your runs and you can do a couple of longer runs with the last 3 to 5 miles at this pace.

If your plan gives you speed work – do it! This is so important for your physical and mental development. I appreciate that it can be confusing to decide on paces and understand the different run type terminology, but your plan should provide guidance on this. For my own explanation of run types, see here.

Run your long runs easy and don’t panic if you have to walk some of it. You want to push yourself somewhat, but you also have to take into account everything else going on: weather; personal stress, terrain; sleep quality – to name just a few. If you need short walking breaks near the end of a long run, that’s fine. It doesn’t necessarily translate to walking on race day, so take the pressure off and enjoy it. Yes, it will be tough – but remeber your goal in this phase: time on feet endurance and fatigue resistance.

Practice your fuelling and hydration. Do not leave this to chance! This is in two parts:

• Pre-race: Think about what you are going to eat in the two days before, and the morning of the marathon. The same goes for hydration: keep your electrolyte levels topped up. Practice in this phase of training, even if it’s just once before a really long run.

• In-run: Experiment with your in-run fuel and hydration. What does the event have available and at what frequency; will it be suitable for you? For example, if they hand out gels or sports drinks and you think you may use them, get hold of some and try them on your runs. Not all products suit everyone and upset stomachs are very common with poor fuelling strategies and a lack of trying products beforehand.

One strategy I’ve used very successfully is pre-loading both fuel and hydration. For fuel, I always use Generation UCAN (Super Starch). This can provide several hours of energy and you take it before you run. You can find out more here, and get a 10% discount using the code: RunTeach.

For hydration, my product of choice is SOS as it’s specifically designed to deliver a measured amount of electrolytes without the fizzing or stomach upset that some other electrolyte products can cause. As a bonus it is also fully organic and mixes immediately. I pre-load with this to ensure I am well hydrated with topped up electrolyte levels. I use it both the night before a long run / race as well as in the morning of the event. You can take it with you if you prefer to carry fluids rather than use the on-course options. You can find more here, and save 20% with discount code: CHRIS20.

I love this phase of marathon training as you can really get your teeth into it. You are building up raw endurance, speed endurance, fatigue resistance, fuel and hydration run-throughs, and for me: starting to do mental and visualisation run-throughs.

Have fun with it, and embrace the challenge – the taper will be here soon enough!

Most importantly, keep a check on your effort and pace – keep it real and doable. Remain calm about your long runs, practice that marathon pace, get in that speed work if it’s on your plan and experiment with fuel and hydration.

Until the next phase, happy training!

The post 5 do’s of marathon training – progressive phase appeared first on RunTeach.

And if your chosen marathon is a tough trail event, you are going to have some unique challenges that the road runners won’t have. Because of this, I’ve provided you with my top 5 tips no matter what type of marathon you are doing, and then added some extra tips for the trail marathoners. 

So, this first phase of training is all about building a base. It’s about getting you used to increasing your mileage and allowing enough recovery for your body’s tissues to adapt. There are lots of other things going on as well, such as improvements to your cardiorespiratory system and adaptation to utilising more body fat for fuel than you may be used to. So, with this in mind, here are my top 5 tips:

This may sound obvious if you already have a training plan, but you may be surprised to learn that there are a large number of runners who don’t follow a training plan.

If you are one of those runners that doesn’t have a plan, I would strongly suggest that you find one you can follow. Some good ones that I’ve seen online are from the Virgin London Marathon team and the one from Bupa. These are both 16 week plans, and while the structure is pretty good, they don’t include any strength or precision work which I believe is vital. They also don’t really include much speed work at any point of the plans: something from my own experience is important as you transition into the next phase of training (approx. 4 weeks time).

One set of plans that does include speed work is from The Running Clinic, and I also like this one because it displays the different phases. However, it is a 20-week plan so you may need to adjust to suit your time frame.

There are also some great books on Amazon with plans. Here are is a selection:

If you already have a plan, make sure it is right for you. We are all different and life often gets in the way of training. There is no point in trying to follow a plan that has you running 4 or 5 days per week when you struggle to get out more than 3 days. Missing sessions or cutting runs short can lead to frustration, guilt, and being underprepared.

If you can’t find an off the shelf program that suits, you could consider getting a personalised plan from a coach such as myself or someone else you can trust. Alternatively, if you are interested in the mechanics, you can learn a little bit about recovery and adapt your off the shelf plan to suit your needs.

Ideally, you want to get into the habit of sticking to the plan as written. Most training plans have been designed in a specific way to take you through all of the adaptations and progressions that you need to reach your race day goal.

Getting into the habit of sticking to the plan in this first phase and not giving yourself excuses such as the rain, wind or cold is very important for the later stages of training.

However, if you have to miss the odd session or cut them short on occasion, that’s fine – you need to be somewhat flexible. As mentioned above, this can lead to feeling guilty and underprepared so it is vital that you reflect on how you feel about this. If you notice that you are getting into the habit of missing runs or avoiding certain types of runs, you need to take stock: are you on the right plan? Does something need to change, and if so what?

Use this first phase to learn how you are adapting to both the distance volume and the number of runs and make changes where necessary. Don’t ignore it as it will come back to bite you later! And that brings me to my next tip…

If you pay attention, your body and your mind will let you know what’s going on. Running a marathon is hard and your body and mind need to adapt to the stress you are going to be putting on them. While it may seem that it’s all physical stress, think about those last 6 miles or so when you may need to dig deep and push on. This part needs training as well, which is why it is so important to also push hard in training. To clarify, I am not saying you need to run fast/hard all the time, when injured, over-fatigued or go beyond what your plan tells you – it is simply that pushing on when you could easily give yourself an excuse to quit will really help you in those final stages on race day.

But the flip side of that is knowing when to calm it all down. Training for a marathon is tiring, there is no getting away from that. But there is being tired and there is being exhausted. Being tired is normal, especially as you progress to longer and harder sessions. Being exhausted though, is not good.

When you get over-fatigued you are more likely to get injured. This can happen due to poor decision making, overuse by pushing through when you should be recovering, and a general lack of control when your nervous system is tired. Knowing when to tone it down comes with experience, but even if this is your first marathon you can tune in to your body and mind. If you are in any doubt then ask. Either ask me a question here, or ask someone else you can trust – don’t suffer in silence!

A great way to learn about your body and mind is to keep a running diary or log. After a run, write down how it went and how you felt, how you slept the night before, eating and drinking etc. I have notes on every run I’ve done (some more detailed than others) going back to when I started in 2009. The notes can be as detailed as you want: the main thing is to capture enough so that when you look back it will be of help to you the next time you do this session, race or workout.

If you know me, then you know this is one of my favourite mantras. Whenever you subject your muscles, connective tissue and bones to repetitive stress such as running, the tissue breaks down. Most runners understand this in a weight training context, but don’t seem to relate it to running. But it is exactly the same process – your body doesn’t know whether you are lifting weights or running on the road or trail. All it knows is that it’s being put under stress.

And whenever your body’s tissues are broken down, they need to have adequate recovery to repair and get stronger. It is during this recovery phase such as sleep, less intense sessions and active recovery (massage, foam rolling, cross training, lighter sessions etc), that the repair and strengthening happens. And it’s not just your muscles, connective tissue and bones that need this: your nervous system also needs to get stronger.

In fact, adaptations to muscle mass to get stronger often takes six or more weeks. Connective tissue can take much longer. Normal microdamage to bones can be repaired and adapted to between 8 and 12 weeks. But, strength gains can happen much quicker with the nervous system. This is because it can instruct muscles to recruit more fibres and motor units in a muscle, making it stronger without increasing the physical size of the muscle. This is often why you can see strength gains in just a couple of weeks. your nervous system ca also take advantage of better movement skills (see my next tip) as it will recruit muscles that work well together.

Whether it is better motor recruitment, bigger mass, stiffer connective tissue or stronger bones, adequate recovery time is critical. Stress is cumulative and if you don’t allow time for it to be adapted to, you are heading for injury and misery.

The cumulative stress mentioned above can cause you all kinds of niggles and pains. Maybe you do the right thing and recover well and start adding some strength work. But, if you are not moving well in the first place, you are at risk of loading areas of your body that are not designed to handle that load. Because running places so much force on your system, learning to move well is essential to reducing cumulative stress in compensating areas.

For example, runner’s knee is a very common complaint. This is particularly true as you start to increase your distance and/or speed. The thing is, in almost all cases, the pain of runner’s knee is caused by improper movement. Just resting and adding strength work is not going to help over the longer term. Yes, strength work can help and you may get away with it but if you are not moving correctly then you are just making incorrect movement patterns stronger. At some point the piper will need paying!

I would recommend at the very least, getting some video of you running so you can see any obvious areas to address. Of course, what I would really suggest is that you get a professional to assess you – and I don’t mean a running shop for a shoe-selection gait analysis (as good as they are for shoe selection – they won’t tell you anything else). In the assessments I do(RunForm and RunTest), I place a lot of emphasis on correct movement. I strongly believe this is important for all runners at all abilities and for all types of running, but it is critical for higher volume and/or higher intensity running.

Yes, marathon training is tough! Yes, marathon training is tiring! Yes, you may feel like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew…

But if you can always find something to smile about, even when you are being battered by the weather or hurting in those last miles of a long run, you’ll progress so much quicker.

Run with friends or a group. Find some appropriate music, if that’s your thing. However you do it, learn to enjoy this phase of training and it will take you through to the future phases with a sense of accomplishment and excitement!

Running trails can be very different from road running. The terrain is likely to be uneven and often there are steep hills and other obstacles to negotiate. All of this takes the precision aspects of running to a different level.

Balance, balance, balance!

My top tip is all about balance. In fact, I’m going to wrap up everything into this section and include everything single leg.

When running on trails, you are going to be relying a lot on foot stability, leg strength and balance. The amount you will be calling on these things will vary with the terrain, but you can be certain that if the ground is going to be uneven at all, then you’ll need good skill in these areas. You’ll also be calling upon core stability and strength to help control your movement as you go up and down hills and across unstable ground.

I’ll write more posts looking at these areas in more detail, so for now here are a few I’ve done to date:

Better night vision

Foot strengthening (also contains links to related articles)

Core stability 1, Core stability 2

Injury

https://www.trailandkale.com/tips/running-first-trail-race/

https://trailrunnermag.com/snowball/technique

The post 7 Do’s of marathon training – base phase appeared first on RunTeach.

“What’s propieception?” you ask. The easiest answer is that it is the brain’s way of knowing where our body is in 3D space when stationary and when moving. As I’m sure you can guess, this is very important when we are running and critical to reduce our fall risk.

How does it work?

Now I won’t get all technical with how it works, but the essence is that we have sensors known as mechanosensory neurons located at our joints and within our skin, muscles and connective tissue. These sensors send messages via our nervous system to our brain to be referred against a central map of our body. If we don’t move a body part well, or don’t use it as it was designed, the brain’s body map goes out of date. Because we aren’t consciously aware of the proprioceptive messages, poor movement becomes the norm without us even realising it. I see this all the time when I carry out the RunTest assessments. It’s not until a runner sees themselves on video that they see their hips are dropping or their foot is turning out, or their arms are sticking out like chicken wings.

Bio-automation

Add to this that our walking and running gait are automatic processes called Central Process Generators (CPGs) that don’t need any external sensory input in order to function. If the movement patterns are poor and we are not overriding the CPGs with good sensory input, the central body map becomes incorrectly updated. This can lead to ever-worsening movement patterns that effectively write poor quality code for the CPGs to execute. The risks of these poor movement patterns are overuse injuries, unexplained pain, and when it comes to running in the dark, an increased risk of tripping or falling.

Most of us are so reliant on our vision when it comes to balance and coordination that when we take it out of the picture, or it’s severely restricted as it is when running in the dark, we don’t have the skills to run as well or as safely as we could.

Warming up

So, what can we do about it? Fortunately, there are lots of simple & short exercises that you can do to improve the proprioceptive skills that we need for running. A great starting point is to update your brain’s central body map. You can do this in a number of ways, and I like to start by doing a bit of a weird neurological warm up. As you’ve probably come to realise, I don’t always do things the same way as everyone else – as Jason Zook says: “own your weird”! 

What I do instead is spend a lot of time finding the information and exercises that actually make a difference, even if they are a bit odd looking. The neurological warm up is one such exercise. This one is from Dr. Cobb at Z-Health (yep, I like Dr. Cobb!) and you can find it here.

I’ve created a PDF Version you can download here.

Get into the habit of doing this warm up (or a version of it) before any activity and you’ll very quickly update your central body map and start to perform better.

Over the next few weeks I’ll share a number of other exercises that you can do to keep improving your proprioception and your ability to run faster and safer, whether in the dark, on the freezing ground or in the glorious winter sun.

The post Better Night Vision – Proprioception appeared first on RunTeach.

It’s going to be an exciting a short post:

There isn’t one!

Don’t worry, I won’t leave you hanging with that bombshell.

But it’s true. Just like diets, there is no one-size-fits-all blueprint for running form.

If you don’t believe me, just watch some of the top performers on the road, cross-country and track.

All those Internet sites and online videos that teach you the “best” way to run are great – except they miss the vital ingredient:

You!

The simple truth is “we all move differently”. And because of this there can’t be just one way to run more efficiently, faster, longer, and less injury prone.

The good news though, is that there is a framework from which you can build your unique blueprint – and this is what I’ve been working on for the last 10 years.

There are some cornerstones that research and experience support that can help us run stronger, faster and longer. But, we have to tailor these to our own uniqueness.

The framework that I’ve built is based on what I call The 3 Marshal Points to Victory:

• Cardiorespiratory fitness
• Neuromapping and proprioception 
• Stiff spring

It lays the foundation for all of us to achieve those cornerstones identified as elements of good running form:

• Relaxed, upright posture with level, stable hips
• Appropriately quick cadence (foot turnover)
• Running from the back
• Up-cycling heels that take advantage of our natural elasticity

If you have ever tried to change your running form then you’ll know just how hard it is. And that’s why you need to personalise it. Do you know what cadence you should be aiming for? Do you know the quirks in your gait that you’ve encoded through years and years of walking and moving?

I believe that running is individual to all of us – after all, we are all unique humans with unique life experiences. Why would there be just one blueprint?

This is why RunTeach exists. I want to share this truth with runners of all abilities, providing the education and tools so you can take control of your own running journey.

Keep tuning in for all the best, and sometimes crazy and weird, stuff I’m going to share from the best resources out there, and start to build your own running form blueprint!

The post The Running Form Blueprint appeared first on RunTeach.