Ryan reads a lot every month. At the end of the month, he shares 2-3 highlights of what he’s been reading.
Do you set big goals for yourself, then get upset at yourself if you fall short?
If so, you’re increasing your risk of burnout.
I’m a fan of setting big goals at least sometimes. However, you have to be careful about how you respond when the inevitable happens. When you set big goals, you will sometimes fall short, quite possibly more often than you reach them.
…We all accept that strength training is beneficial for runners, right? But what to do? There are so many different forms you can do. What ones really help for runners?
Well, a couple of things I read this month drove the point home: Yes, strength training is beneficial for runners. The key point, though, is that almost anything will help if you have been doing nothing.
Personally, while I do believe anything is better than nothing, I believe the combination of runners more likely sticking to the routine plus working multiple muscles in coordination makes “complex” body weight exercises like squats, lunges and push ups for the upper body are probably best for most runners.
…Strength training, “running is my drug of choice”Read More »
Most of us who strength train intuitively know that it seems right to taper your strength training before important races. However, there are convincing arguments to be made that certain neuromuscular gains will be quickly lost if you reduce your strength training too quickly or completely drop it.
Has this been tested, though? Well, we didn’t think so until people started asking questions during the pandemic when fitness centers and weight rooms were being closed. At that point, a researcher realized he had limited results from a follow up to a strength training study he did some number of years ago.
What did these results find?
…Tapering your strength training, protein before bed, pre-run stretchingRead More »
We’re always looking for a better way to choose the right running shoe. For a long time, it was believed we wanted to find a shoe that would promote “neutral” pronation. That’s the world I grew up in and what I, along with pretty much everyone else during the time, believed.
Then, we realized that using this method didn’t seem to reduce injury risk. So along came the “just find the pair of shoes that’s more comfortable” theory. It’s one I adopted (and, for myself, it didn’t really change the shoes I was picking). I believe it works well but is it really the best? We haven’t seen injury rates drop dramatically, if at all, since switching to this method.
…If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you’ve probably seen me mention specificity of training. In short, this is the idea that the best way to become a better runner is to run. You can do other things and they will help but they won’t help as much as devoting the same amount of time and energy to running.
But then, why do things like strength training matter? Strength training specifically is extremely different than distance running. It’s basically a polar opposite. So why does it help us run better?
Well, Alex Hutchinson offers some thoughts on that. An interesting read.
…