Summer is almost here. Maybe it's already here for you! For many of you it's time to start training or just doing physically straining activities! It's all fun and games... until you get injured. I went too hard, too fast this past year and sprained my shoulder. That's really no fun at all. My left arm is now so much weaker than my right arm, and some things that I would love to do, hurt in a bad way. I wake up with a sore/stiff shoulder almost every morning. So how do you prevent this from happening to you? I'll give you some tips.
Warm up! I don't care how hot it is. Your muscles need to warm up and your joints need to some more liquid to prevent injuries. Warming up may seem pointless in 80 to 90 degree weather, but it's not. Trust me. Do it. You won't need a long warmup, but don't just start lifting, jumping or sprinting cold.
Another thing is to cool down. Stretch. Stretching increases flexibility, flexibility helps prevent injury. If I could do a split, I would probably never have had a pulled hamstring. Increasing flexibility is always good. Just don't push it too much or you'll strain and/or tear something and lose all your flexibility. There are some exercises you can't do because of lack of flexibility, so it's always good to work on this.
Ok, now the point of this post: take it easy......at first. You may have the strength in your muscles and heart to run 5 miles 3-6 days a week suddenly, but I doubt your tendons (and some of your muscles) will handle that well. If your form isn't perfect, increasing that rapidly will most likely give you shin splints as well. You see, with almost anything physically straining, you're breaking down your muscle, then it repairs in better shape, and bigger if you're training for that. You tendons take a beating as well... but due to lack of blood flow and a few more various things, they recover slower. The more you do, the harder they work. Heavy or explosions strain them even more. Light weight and light running are the best way to increase tendon strength. Lifting heavy without a month (at least) of light weights is asking for tendon issues. Believe me, I know. It's not fun.
So start off with light weights, or low volume slow running. If you aren't a trained athlete, starting out with one or two days with 20-30 minutes of running/brisk walking. Then maybe one day of 2-3 miles. You should track your weekly milage, and increase 5-10% weekly... but listen to your body. If it's unusually sore or achy and it's a running day, don't run. Take it off. Maybe run tomorrow. Injuries will slow you down 10x more than not running for a few days. I'd say a good starting number is 8-10 miles a week. Then build up to at least 20 miles a week before you start adding a hill run or sprinting work. If you're only training for sprinting, then less milage is ok. Just be careful, your tendons may not be ready. If you're cross training (mixing two or more sports), then 20 miles a week is not needed. Maybe something like 15 miles of running a week, with 15-30 miles of biking a week.
Just slowly build up. Take it easy. Once you have a strong base, then boom. Time to go harder! It actually might come naturally, if you slowly build up and don't plateau, hardcore training might just happen and almost seem easy to you! But you'll likely plateau if all you do is long slow runs. Once you get above 20 miles a week, you're going to have to mix it up. Maybe add sprints, hill runs, and extra slow runs for extra mileage.
As for weight training? There is tons of stuff you can do, but I'd start with a weight I can do 15-25 times, 3-5 sets or 8-16 reps, with 0.5-2 minutes of rest. And slowly build up. Adding 2.5-5 pounds is usually good. Only increase if you can complete your higher rep range for all your sets. Eventually if you want, you can lower your reps to something like 4-10 reps. This builds more muscle but increases the chance of injury. So be careful, as usual.
Bottom line? Start out easier than you think you could do. Build up, and you should be fine. Don't be over zealous and burnout... but most of all: have fun and still run!
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