Tonight I attended a running clinic put on by the Farmington Valley Runner’s Group with Coach Al Lyman. I just wanted to jot down a few notes from what he said for future reference. Just a brain dump really.
- One big issue that he identified was similar to what my physical therapist mentioned previously about muscles firing in the correct order. He mentioned that the glutes often aren’t firing during the run which leads to compensation by other muscles and eventually to injury.
- One thing he mentioned was doing proper bridges to get your glutes to fire more effectively.
- Doing these exercises 3 times a week or more will help get the glutes going, focus on keeping your core steady and not curling your hips when you lift.
- He also mentioned training purposefully. Don’t just slog out the miles, understand what the goal is for the run and attack it, could be speed training or endurance training, it doesn’t matter focus on that
- Slow down the endurance runs, should have maybe a couple miles at the end at a faster pace, the rest really easy
- Train for the race, match the conditions, i.e. same hills in the same places, in order to prepare for the race
- A hard training run will make your normal pace seem easier, it is all about managing perception
- Your glutes should work the hardest when running, and the downward and backward pressure, i.e. the pushoff on the back of your run stride is the key to increasing propulsion.
- As an aside, this makes sense, use your arms to swim, your quads to bike, and your glutes to run
- I need to focus on keeping the cadence up 100+ steps per minute, while keeping my feet under my body for higher propulsion
That’s it for now.