Top and Bottom Working Together

In addition to helping you run more smoothly, a strong upper body will help you to avoid injury. Ron Clarke, who set several world records in the 1960s, used to say that a distance runner couldn’t be too strong in the middle. What he meant was that when you run, the shock that comes every time that your feet hit the ground is transmitted throughout your body if your midsection is strong. Strong stomach and back muscles absorb some of that shock, rather than confining it to your legs. The result is that your legs have to put up with less impact force and won’t get as overloaded with potential wear and tear.
If you doubt this statement, think of trying to run if your body were like an accordion. With every step, you’d send shock from your feet up your legs to your middle, where, if you’re like an accordion, you’d then sag over or almost crumple. That’s not how to run smoothly or comfortably!

Only the Strong Finish First

Decent upper-body strength especially helps you when you tire on a run. For an extreme demonstration of this principle, go watch a race sometime. At the finish, you’ll see that the top finishers, no matter how hard they might be straining and striving, are running pretty smoothly. Their shoulders aren’t hunched over or somewhere up around their ears; instead, their shoulders are low, and their arms are driving in sync with their legs. Even when they’re very tired, one of the reasons that they can keep running fast is because their upper body is strong enough to keep up with their legs. Then watch for the finishers farther back. Many of them are tired in the arms, shoulders, and back, and you can see it in their form, which has disintegrated greatly from how it was at the beginning of the race. That’s partly because they’re not as strong relative to the top finishers, no matter how scrawny the first few people across the line might look.

Hurry Up and Weight

So if running isn’t going to make you so weak that you need help bringing in the Sunday paper, then why am I saying that all runners should do some strengthening work? For starters, because everyone should, in the same way that everyone should do some sort of regular aerobic exercise. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that all adults do two or three resistance training sessions per week to maintain and build muscular strength. This recommendation makes sense to me. Being cardiovascularly fit, as you will become through running, is certainly the most important aspect of being fit, but it’s not the only one.
More specifically for runners, you’ll be able to progress more in your running if you include some basic strengthening exercises in your program. This type of movement means, among other things, that your upper body flows right along with your legs, rather than being somewhat awkwardly perched atop your legs, contradicting their every move. When you have a basic level of strength in your upper body, you can hold yourself better and more upright as you run. This ability will make a given pace feel easier.

Ever Notice That Runners Are Skinny?

Before getting down to business, I want to set a few things straight. And no, I’m not just doing this because I’m tired of having sand kicked in my face. Look at pictures of top runners at any distance from the mile on up, and you’ll notice one common trait—they’re all really skinny! Especially in the arms and torso, these are bodies that make people think more about prison camps than peak health. This impression is particularly prevalent with male runners, in part because our society still equates masculinity with brute strength.
But appearances can be deceiving. Yes, it’s true that in comparative studies, distance runners usually score below average in tests of muscular strength, as measured by a onerepetition maximum. But that’s largely because of the fact that their weight is also below average. When the figures are adjusted to take into account strength for body size, runners have average strength.
I’m making this point because some people, mostly men, are turned off by running because of how skinny top runners are. Given how we’re conditioned to think that bigger is always better, that’s understandable, but it’s also unfounded. Top runners are born with a body type that predisposes them to thinness, especially when they run upwards of 15 miles a day.
For most people, looking like that is just never going to happen, especially given that almost nobody is going to put in the number of miles that top runners do day after day, week after week. So don’t let the looks of a few genetic freaks—I’m including myself here—discourage you from running. You’re probably going to lose some weight as a result of your running, and I assume that most of you see that result as good. What you’re not going to lose is relative strength.

The Right Way to Stretch

For many of us, our early memories of stretching come from gym class. There, we did windmills, where we jerked one side of our body toward the other while touching one hand to the opposite foot. We probably also remember stretching being an exercise in group counting, with a leader saying, “One, two, three,” and the group responding, “Four!” So even when we weren’t bouncing around, we were holding our stretches for a few seconds, at best.

I hope I don’t disillusion you too much when I tell you that what you were taught in school wasn’t quite the truth about stretching. (And you thought it was only in sex ed class that you were given misinformation.) Bouncy, jerky movements and stretches that are held for a few seconds aren’t the kind of flexibility exercises that are going to help you as a runner. If anything, they’ll hurt you; you’re better off not stretching at all if you’re not going to do it right.

What is the right way to stretch? A good way to understand the right way is to know more about the wrong ways. The bouncy, jerky stretching I just described is called ballistic stretching. It’s bad because when you make a movement that lengthens a muscle, its initial reaction is to contract. Think about what happens when you briefly extend a coil, and then suddenly let it go. The same quick return to a shorter state happens when you stretch ballistically. This type of stretching increases, rather than lessens, the amount of tension in your muscles. In some cases, it can cause the muscles to tear. That’s not a great way to lower your risk of injury.

The right way to stretch is to do so comfortably, gently, and consistently. Improving, or at least maintaining, your flexibility is similar to improving your endurance. The key to progress in your running is to find a comfortable level of effort and to work out regularly at that level. As you stick with that approach, your endurance will increase, and you can gradually run more, or faster, without any more effort.

The same is true with stretching. Regardless of the specific exercise you’re doing, you want to find a point where the muscles you’re working on are stretched just enough so that you can feel it, but not so much that it’s obvious you’re overdoing it. This type of stretching is known as static stretching. As with the first part of your running program, when in doubt, ease up. It’s better to stretch a muscle a bit less than to overdo it. As with boosting your endurance, when it comes to flexibility, slow and long are better than fast and short. You should hold all stretches for at least 15 seconds. Thirty seconds is even better. This amount of time encourages increased blood flow to the muscles you’re concentrating on, which will gradually elongate them. When you comfortably hold a stretch for 15 to 30 seconds, the muscles will relax. This reduction in muscular tension is what makes you feel looser, both right after the stretch and from day to day when you’re consistent with your flexibility program.

After the stretch, relax the muscles you’re working on for the same amount of time. Then do the stretch once more, again holding it for 15 to 30 seconds. By the end of the second time you’ve done a certain stretch, you’ll probably notice that your flexibility in that area is greater than when you began, just like your normal training pace is easier 10 minutes into a run than at the beginning.

Some runners find it helps to time their stretches to ensure that they’re holding them for that 15 to 30 second range. Many people who say that they can’t hold a stretch for that long say so because they hold their breath while they stretch. After 10 or so seconds, they let the stretch go because they need to breathe. You should always be able to breathe normally while stretching.

Reasons for Stretching

Before showing you how to stretch, I want to tell why you should stretch. Some runners never stretch and try to cover up the real reason they don’t (laziness) with silly theories. The main reason offered for not stretching is summarized by the supposedly rhetorical question, “You never see a racehorse stretch, do you?” What they’re trying to say is thoroughbreds seem to be able to run pretty well just by running. To suggest that humans need to do more to run is to argue with nature.

Yes, it’s true that you don’t see racehorses stretch. You also don’t see racehorses sit behind a desk eight hours a day, or run on asphalt, or start running after being sedentary for the previous 40 years. I don’t see racehorses eating spaghetti, either, but that doesn’t mean I think that runners shouldn’t. So maybe when we’re all bred solely to run fast and spend our days trotting around on dirt tracks, we can forego stretching. In the meantime, all runners, at least of the human variety, should stretch.

As running strengthens your muscles, it also shortens and tightens them. This is especially true of the prime movers on your back side: your Achilles tendons, calves, hamstrings, butt, and back muscles. You’re will feel better running, as well as most of the rest of the time, if these muscles are limber and can move through a wider range of motion.

By way of analogy, think about in which instance you’d rather launch into a sprint:
immediately after having been driving for the past two hours or after having walked around the block? Intuitively, you know that you feel better running when you’re looser, no matter what the racehorse fans would have you believe. And just as you’re more limber at a specific time if you’ve been moving around, you’re more limber in general if you regularly incorporate stretching into your running program. Another important reason that all runners should stretch is because properly doing so will lower the risk of injury. Note that I said “properly.” I’ll get to what that means in a bit. What I want to say here is that the anti-stretchers will often give you anecdotal evidence about runners they know who stretch and still get injured. To that I say, “Yeah, and…?” No one has ever claimed that stretching will prevent injury. And when it’s done wrong, it most definitely can cause injury.

But when stretching is done right, it can help keep you injury-free. That’s true for the same reason that a short, taut rope is more likely to break under a given amount of force than a longer one of the same strength. In both cases, the shorter, tighter fiber is being asked to do a relatively greater amount of work, and eventually, it will tear from the task. When your muscles and connective tissues are more supple, they can more easily absorb and distribute the repetitive shock that running subjects them to. Because of these benefits, stretching has some adherents who are as zealous about doing it as some people are opposed to it. I know some runners who couldn’t care less about what you think regarding their political positions, but will subject you to hours of debate if you dare question their approach to stretching. You’ll see these runners at tracks sometimes, stretching for a good half an hour on the infield, and then jogging a mile and heading home. Some runners, it seems, get so carried away with their stretching that they spend far more time on it than they do putting in the miles. Now, I’m all for people doing whatever exercises they find make them feel good. But this is a blog for runners, not would-be yoga masters. It’s hard enough to find time on a regular basis to keep up a consistent running program. I don’t want people to think that on top of their running, they need to spend several hours a week stretching. That’s not necessary, and I think you’re more likely to stick with a stretching routine if it becomes just that, a routine, and an easy one at that.

How much time should you allow for stretching? The program I outline in this blog section should take only about 15 minutes to do. If you can do that four times a week, that’s only one hour out of the 168 hours in a week. I don’t think that’s too much time to spend to contribute significantly to making your running easier, more enjoyable, and less interrupted by injury.

Why stretch?

This has happened to almost everyone who has run for a while: You’re pushing against a wall or car or other big, immovable object, with one leg bending toward the object, the other behind it and straight. Invariably, someone comes along and says, “Need help holding it up?”
Ha, ha. What these people often don’t know is that you’re doing one of the classic runner stretches, the wall push-up. It might look funny, but it sure does a great job of stretching your Achilles tendons and calves, which can get sore and tight with running. As you probably know, those aren’t the only parts of your body that can get sore and tight from running. In this blog section, I’ll show you how to stretch to increase your flexibility throughout your body so that you can run with more efficiency and fewer injuries. I’ll also let you in on a related secret that has helped to keep me on the road for so many years.

How to pick the best treadmill?

You’ve determined that having a treadmill in your home will improve your running by making it more convenient. What do you need to know before you buy one? First off, you better have a nice bit of disposable income if you want to buy one that’s worth the trouble. Although treadmills are available for as little as $400, they’re not suitable for regular running. Their belts often stop running smoothly once you put in some miles on them, they’re much more likely to break down with regular use, and some of them barely go fast enough to allow you to run with normal form. Most treadmill devotees say that a good benchmark price is $1,500. Spend that much, and you can be pretty sure that the combination of features and construction will allow you to run smoothly on the treadmill for several years. Of course, there are manufacturers who will be happy to sell you a treadmill for more than twice that much. These high-end models are a little better, but as with buying a car, once you get to a certain level of quality, you start getting diminishing returns for your extra money.

Because of the expense involved, you should be sure that you’re going to use your treadmill regularly before investing in one. If you do decide to go shopping for one, keep these buying tips in mind:

• Shop at a store that offers several models, that will deliver and assemble your treadmill, and that provides a maintenance contract.
• Take your running gear to the store and run on the model you’re interested in for at least 10 minutes. (If the store won’t let you, take your business elsewhere.)
  
• Be sure that the treadmill doesn’t shake at the top speed that you plan to run on it.
• The machine’s top speed should be faster than the fastest that you plan to run on it. Same thing for elevation. It’s not good to frequently run a treadmill at full power.
• You should be able to change the controls easily while you’re running without having to alter your form drastically.
• The control panel shouldn’t shake while you’re running.
• To keep you from tripping, the belt should start and stop gradually, and the handlebars should be reachable, but not intrusive.

You also should consider how loud the treadmill is when you’re running on it. How much noise is acceptable for you depends on where you’ll be using your treadmill and whether others will be near while you’re using it.

Milling About

How do you know if a treadmill is for you? I strongly recommend that you use one frequently before going out and buying one. Who among us doesn’t have a piece of home exercise equipment that accumulates dust more than it does usage? If you think regularly using a treadmill might be for you, join a health club for a month. See what it’s like to run on a treadmill a few times a week. Be honest with yourself about whether you’ll continue to do so after you’ve put down some pretty serious bucks to have one in your home.
Here are some ways to beat boredom on treadmills:

• Watch the TV news or your favorite sitcom. Next thing you know (you hope), half an hour is up.
• Listen to motivational music.
• Don’t stare at the console—the time will pass more slowly if you do.
• Break your run into segments of various lengths and paces rather than one long haul at the same pace on the same grade.
• Have a friend run “with” you on an adjacent treadmill. Runners of vastly different ability can run side by side on treadmills.
• Run in front of a mirror to monitor your form.
• Visualize yourself out on your favorite running route. Imagine where you would be on that route 10 minutes into your run, 20 minutes into your run, and so on.

Also, if you have a treadmill at home, put inspirational posters or pictures nearby. Just do something so that you’re not always staring at a wall! If you have a treadmill in your home, don’t stick it in that musty corner of your basement. You’re just not going to be motivated to get on it a lot that way. Create as pleasant a setting as you can. Ann Trason, who has the women’s world record for 100K (that’s 62.1 miles!), has her treadmill near a window that overlooks a grassy hill. Also, putting the treadmill near a window gives you the chance to breathe some fresh air during your run, so at least you’re not foregoing all the benefits of running outdoors. If you can’t be near a window, try to have a fan nearby to keep the air circulating. You’re probably going to sweat more on a treadmill because there’s not the wind resistance that you encounter outside. So keep a towel handy.

The Fast Lane on the Beltway

It doesn’t take a blizzard to spur some runners to hop on a treadmill. Many owners just aren’t big fans of heading out in the dark and cold nearly every day for more than a quarter of the year. Treadmills are a great way to stick with your running through the toughest parts of the year. And that can mean summer, too—some runners retreat to treadmills when it’s scorching outside, but air-conditioned inside. How bad can it be always to have a nice, cool bottle of water within reach? Busy parents also appreciate treadmills because they solve the child-care question. These runners keep Junior occupied nearby while they hop on the treadmill for their 30 or 40 minutes of running.
Treadmills have long been a favorite of runners returning from or nursing an injury. The belt on most of them is padded, so you’re assured a softer, more level surface with surer footing than you would probably find outside. There’s also the matter of control. You can have pretty much any kind of workout you want on a good treadmill, all at the touch of a button. You can play with the incline setting to simulate a hilly run, adjust the pace setting to get in some fast running, or just keep the pace constant and see how long you can comfortably keep up.
Notice that I said “pretty much any kind of workout.” One of the few types of workouts that you can’t have on a treadmill is a visually interesting one. That’s the main drawback of treadmills—it can be very difficult not to feel like a gerbil in a cage. No matter how bad the weather, I would prefer to run outside most days. I like looking at my surroundings, encountering Mother Nature, and all that. But that’s me. If treadmills help to make your running easier, then I’m all in favor of your using one.