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.

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.

Running for Beginners

BY SUSAN

As you have noticed, we do quite a bit of run­ning at Boot Camp 4a Cause. Whether it’s to warm up our tight, tired, sleepy mus­cles at 6 am, or to get from one loca­tion to another, or because it’s the work­out of the day — we RUN! Run­ning is a fan­tas­tic way to raise your heart rate, build endurance and burn calories.

If run­ning is new to you or if you haven’t done it in a long time, be patient. Per­sis­tence and con­sis­tency will help you trans­form and adapt. In your own time and at your own pace, you will see your run­ning abil­i­ties improve.

It is impor­tant to remem­ber some key things when running:

1. It sounds silly, but breathe. So often we take off with the group and lit­er­ally hold our breath. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Focus on longer, deeper breaths and exhale more fully. Prac­tice as you go and soon it will be sec­ond nature.
2. Shake out your arms, keep them loose. We all have a ten­dency to tense up, so shake out those shoul­ders, arms and hands and relax.
3. Lengthen your stride. Short steps will tire you out faster. This is often a rookie mis­take, but by remind­ing your­self to stretch out your legs you will improve your performance.

Lost your resolve to run? Here’s how to get moti­vated. Again.
Read Get Up and Go by Runner’s World »

Do you have any run­ning tips for begin­ners? Share them by click­ing the “Com­ments” link above this post.

We Heard You

Last fall, we con­ducted a sur­vey among all of our boot campers and 48 of you took the time to let us know what we are doing well and where you would like to see some changes. (See all sur­vey results)

Over­all, you like us. You really like us. In all sin­cer­ity, it is nice to see so many peo­ple have bought into our vision of being well and doing good. It makes get­ting up every morn­ing for boot camp worthwhile.

There are areas that you felt we can do bet­ter and we agree. Hope­fully you have already felt some of these changes.

Log Books
We are chang­ing the pur­pose of the log books. We do not want these to be seen as us try­ing to “catch you” eat­ing some­thing you shouldn’t. They are about mak­ing you aware of what you are eat­ing to help you reach your goals.

To that end, we are doing away with pun­ish­ment for eat­ing poorly. You are grown-ups and can make your own choices. How­ever, in your first six months of boot camp we will ask you keep a log of what you eat so we can help you use food to reach your fit­ness goals – because at the end of the day, that is what we are here for.

Warm-ups
There is an order to the warm-ups we do to get the mus­cles warmed up prop­erly and pre­vent injury. How­ever, we will add greater vari­ety to the warm-ups and we will keep them as quick as pos­si­ble, yet still remain effective.

Run­ning
There was a lot of dis­cus­sion around run­ning. There is a clear desire to become stronger run­ners. This does not mean we will become a run­ning club. We will be incor­po­rat­ing more run­ning into the work­outs in the form of sprints, hill runs and other tricks that help make peo­ple bet­ter runners.

We look for­ward to another great year with you. If you have any sug­ges­tions on how we can help you meet your goals, let us know!