Post-Run Yoga Routine to Restore Your Legs

From Active​.com

If you have tight ham­strings (and what run­ner doesn’t?), the prob­lem may have as much to do with the front of your legs as the back. Tight hip flex­ors can pull your pelvis for­ward, putting stress on the ham­strings and lower back. These mus­cles, which con­nect your back and hip to your femur bone, become espe­cially inflex­i­ble after long peri­ods of sit­ting. So if you have a desk job or a long com­mute, you’ll find this series of stretches—which tar­gets the hip flex­ors and the hamstrings—especially ben­e­fi­cial. Do this rou­tine after a run once your mus­cles are warm. Hold each pose for at least 30 seconds.

1. DANCER

Start in a clas­sic quad stretch. Then, hinge for­ward, kick­ing your right foot back. Extend your left arm for balance.

2. DOWNWARD-FACING DOG WITH LEG LIFT

From downward-facing dog, lift one leg. Lower. Repeat on the other side.

3. FLIPPED DOG

From down­ward dog, lift your right leg, and rotate upside down. Reach your right arm out. Flip back. Repeat lift­ing left leg.

4. LUNGE WITH SIDE STRETCH

From down­ward dog, bring your right foot between your hands and come to a lunge. Reach your left arm overhead.

5. LUNGE WITH QUAD STRETCH

From a low lunge posi­tion (right knee on the ground), reach your right hand back and hold your foot.

6. BOW POSE

Lie face down. Bend your knees and bring your feet toward your glutes. Reach both arms back and grab hold of your feet.

SOURCE: Sage Roundtree, a USA Triathlon-and RRCA-certified coach and yoga teacher in Chapel Hill, North Car­olina, is the author of The Athlete’s Pocket Guide to Yoga. Watch her demon­strate this rou­tine at run​ner​sworld​.com/​y​oga.

How to Run Downhill

From Active​.com

Run­ning uphill is a chal­leng­ing car­dio work­out, but run­ning down­hill requires great tech­nique and strong form. The fol­low­ing tips can help you run down­hill by con­serv­ing your energy, reduc­ing your chance of injury, and improv­ing your speed.

 
1. Build up slowly to steeper hills.
Prac­tice hill tech­nique on small hills first because the steeper the hill, the harder it is to stay in con­trol on the decent. Small hills help build your con­fi­dence and per­fect your form.

2. Con­trol your pos­ture and keep your strides short and fast.
Short, fast strides allow you to adapt quickly to chang­ing ter­rain and keep you in con­trol of your speed so you don’t end up doing som­er­saults down the hill. Work with grav­ity. Instead of try­ing to pull back, focus on keep­ing your pos­ture straight and your legs mov­ing constantly.

3. Con­trol from your core and relax your legs.
The far­ther the mus­cles are from your core, the more relaxed they should be. So keep your core tight, but your lower leg and foot mus­cles as relaxed as pos­si­ble. This helps you adapt to ground changes quickly.

A strong core is your best asset for con­quer­ing hills. You may also find that your legs move faster when they are relaxed, although you are exert­ing less energy.

4. The steeper the hill, the more fore­foot your land­ings should be.
Your feet are more adapt­able when you land on your fore­foot going down­hill. This helps pro­duce a bet­ter turnover rate and sup­ports a speed increase.

5. Reduce fric­tion with rapid, con­trolled strides.
As you run down­hill, grav­ity pulls you for­ward. To keep from falling on your face, you need to either slow your­self down using fric­tion, or speed up your foot land­ings. Opt for faster foot land­ings. This can help you run both faster and more safely.

6. Rest as grav­ity pushes you for­ward.
After a hill ascent, this can be a wel­come rest. Let grav­ity do most of the work here. Use your core mus­cles only to hold back enough to main­tain control.

The key to run­ning down­hill is to main­tain con­fi­dence, stay relaxed, and work with grav­ity. Don’t be afraid as you gain speed. Increas­ing your cadence can pre­vent you from falling. Remem­ber: short, fre­quent, and con­trolled steps are essen­tial for run­ning down­hill effi­ciently and safely.

How to Develop a Healthy Mental Attitude When You Run

By Danny Dreyer • ChiRun­ning

In ChiRun­ning, we uti­lize the prin­ci­ple of non-identification to help you in achiev­ing your run­ning goals, whether you are try­ing to start on a run­ning pro­gram, improve your tech­nique, or PR your 10K. Bot­tom line, non-identification requires that you get a grip on your ego. Ego is such a loaded word. Really, it’s not a bad thing. It’s a good healthy part of your psy­che. How­ever, when the ego runs the show, things can go out of whack. Non-identification doesn’t ask you to drop your ego. It just asks you to keep it in bal­ance with other aspects of your self, and espe­cially with what your body has to say.

When the ego makes the choices with­out being bal­anced with the input of your body and being, your work­outs and goals are prob­a­bly out of bal­ance as well. The ego is a two-sided coin. It can either inflate or deflate your sense of self. When inflated, it may demand that you run a 10K in 50 min­utes when your body is really ready for a 56-minute run. This is a recipe for injury.

When deflated, your ego might give in to the nag­ging ache in your knee rather than try­ing just a lit­tle bit more to learn to lean and there­fore not strike with your heels. When your ego is deflated, you give up too easily.

Non-identification is the art of mak­ing healthy deci­sions and of see­ing your­self from a bal­anced place with­out judg­ing your­self. If you are defin­ing your self-worth by how well a run goes–either neg­a­tively or with an inflated sense of pride–then you are iden­ti­fy­ing with how you run. When you are non-identified, you eval­u­ate your run, but not your self worth. You notice what you did well, what you need to improve upon and enjoy the process of learn­ing and improv­ing your run­ning technique.

It doesn’t mean you don’t feel good about your accom­plish­ments. As a mat­ter of fact, when you are non-identified you may feel your accom­plish­ments more deeply, more qui­etly and more pro­foundly. You may take more delight in the smaller things in your life. It also means that you don’t judge your­self too harshly when things don’t go the way you want. The voices of “I’m not good enough, fast enough or strong enough” will never help you accom­plish anything.

Non-identification also means see­ing the big pic­ture of your­self. You are aware of your strengths, your chal­lenges and your long-term goals. This knowl­edge helps keep you on track and keeps you from get­ting side­lined by the many lures of the ego.

To get to a place of non-identification, prac­tice the Five Mind­ful Steps (from Chi­Walk­ing). First, think of the issue about which you need to make a choice, then:

1. Get Aligned — Stand up straight. Feel your spine. Feel your pos­ture straight from your head to your feet (or tail­bone if you are sit­ting). This will give you some sta­bil­ity and a stronger sense of self and focus. Get aligned with your big pic­ture goal. Does this choice fit in with that goal? Get aligned with sup­port­ing your goal in the best way possible.
2. Engage Your Core — You want to lis­ten to “the mind” of your body. To do so, focus your mind on your gut. Lit­er­ally feel the area just below your navel and in toward your spine. Then, engage that part of your body on a phys­i­cal level for at least 20 sec­onds or more. Now, ask the ques­tion regard­ing the choice you have to make. Can you notice how the answer has a dif­fer­ent feel­ing than when you just engage your mind?
3. Cre­ate Bal­ance — Find the bal­ance in your body phys­i­cally by mov­ing from foot to foot until you are bal­anced on both feet. Then move your torso until you find bal­ance in your body. Now, allow your mind to explore your var­i­ous choices. Try them on and look at them from var­i­ous per­spec­tives. Feel what each choice feels like.
4. Make a Choice — From this place of align­ment, core engage­ment and deep bal­ance, you will be able to see your­self and make a choice from a non-identified, but healthy per­spec­tive. Your mind and ego will have had their input, but your body will have been included in the process.
5. Move For­ward — Once you have made a choice. It is always good to take steps to move in your cho­sen direc­tion. It will help instate the choice into your mind and body.

A few other ways to prac­tice non-identification:

• Lighten up. Learn to laugh at your­self. If you can laugh at your mis­takes, you are most likely in a non-identified place where you are not truly judg­ing your­self, and you’re not tak­ing your­self too seri­ously. Life is short. Lighten up and learn to enjoy “what is” to stay healthy.
• Ask oth­ers. Get other people’s opin­ions of what you should do and just lis­ten to their ideas. You don’t have to fol­low their advice, but be open to other perspectives.
• Run for fun. If you’re too seri­ous about your run­ning, event, or goals you will have a ten­dency to get over iden­ti­fied. Make sure you really do run at least one fun run a week and keep it that way–just for pure enjoyment.
• Keep a log. Writ­ing down the results of our work­outs and runs can help you get per­spec­tive and solve any chal­lenges you are facing.

Great run­ning form doesn’t just come from good tech­nique (although it’s a great place to start). It comes from hav­ing a healthy men­tal atti­tude. When you prac­tice non-identification you might not just become a bet­ter run­ner, you might become a bet­ter per­son as well.

Best Winter Running Socks

From About​.com, Run­ning and Jogging

Wear­ing the right run­ning socks when run­ning in the cold weather is not just a mat­ter of com­fort, it’s also a safety issue. If your feet get too cold and wet, you could be at risk for frost­bite. Try some of these run­ning socks for max­i­mum com­fort and protection.

Smart­Wool Adren­a­line Socks
These socks are actu­ally designed to keep your feet warm in the win­ter and cool in the sum­mer. The Smart­Wool Merino wool allows for supe­rior tem­per­a­ture reg­u­la­tion and mois­ture man­age­ment, and the socks’ Smart­Fit Sys­tem puts tech­nol­ogy to work by adding cush­ion and sup­port where it’s needed, with­out extra weight.

Thorlo Thick Cush­ion Run­ning Sock
Many run­ners swear by Thorlo socks for their cush­ion­ing, com­fort and blis­ter pro­tec­tion. These socks fea­ture max­i­mum fit­ness den­sity padding for bet­ter dura­bil­ity, as well as pro­tec­tion against shock and impact. The light­weight padding in the arch pro­vides arch sup­port and a bet­ter fit.

Fee­tures Bam­boo and Wool Run­ning Socks
The wool in these run­ning socks insu­lates your feet, keep­ing them at a com­fort­able tem­per­a­ture, while bam­boo makes the sock soft, and antimi­cro­bial to pre­vent foot odor. And it’s eco-friendly, too! Both fibers wick away mois­ture, so feet stay dry.

Dry­max Cold Weather Run­ning Socks
Dry­max Cold Weather Run­ning Socks have a spe­cial Dual Layer Mois­ture Removal Sys­tem, which instantly moves mois­ture from the skin, through the inner Dry­max layer to the outer absorbent layer, keep­ing feet dry. A third layer of Dry­max fiber insu­la­tion was added along the front of the sock, since that area gets cold­est due to wind chill. The socks also fea­ture dense padding (rather than thick padding), as it pro­tects feet with­out adversely affect­ing the fit of the shoes. These socks are designed for use in cold to cool con­di­tions, keep­ing feet dry, com­fort­able and odor-free.

Hot Weather Running Tips

Thank­fully, we run well before the sun is up, so we are able to enjoy some slightly cooler weather and don’t have to worry about sun­block. How­ever, if you run on your own out­side boot camp dur­ing these Hot­lanta sum­mer days, keep these sim­ple — yet often over­looked — tips in mind: