Roundups

The eternal debate is back, if it ever went away. Is too much running bad for your heart? I’ve faced a number of people who have tried telling me it is so. Chances are you also have.

But is it true? The “evidence” given to support this idea is usually anecdotal or flat out false. How many times have you been told about Jim Fixx? While his death was tragic, when you look at the big picture with him specifically or with runners overall, things look much different.

Well, now we have more evidence that even extreme exercise doesn’t appear to be a health risk. It appears going beyond a certain extent of exercise doesn’t help your health but it also doesn’t harm your health. So, if you enjoy doing more, don’t worry about it.

Read on for more of what I’ve been reading about recently…

Is extreme exercise bad for your heart?Read More »

I’ve written a few times about icing and what we now know about it. Let me do it again.

While we used to think icing an injury or even icing sore legs in general was a good idea, we now have enough evidence to strongly believe exactly the opposite is true.

It appears that ice does not help. It might even hurt. The evidence of this is convincing and growing rapidly.

Do you use ice?Read More »

An interesting question to think about: can changing your self-talk actually help you run better? I’m sure many of us just answered “yes”. If you have negative self-talk, that’s not going to help you run faster. Positive self-talk will, though.

What about more subtle differences? Can slight changes in how you think of things during races help you? As it turns out, they can.

When you refer to yourself in the second person (“You can do it” instead of “I can do it”) you actually do perform better.

Also of note is that more positive references were used in the study. “You/I have to do it” was replaced with “You/I can do it” for example. While it doesn’t seem like this was addressed as part of the test, I have a suspicion this would also make a difference.

This is just one small study but it’s worth trying.

Can you talk yourself into better performance?Read More »

The age old question: to become a better/faster runner, do you need to run faster or run longer?

Alex Hutchinson looked into a debate that was held on this.

To get better: run faster or longer?Read More »