Cross-training keeps your whole body balanced.
Running benefits from a range of supporting exercise, and cross-training is one of the most valuable additions to a runner's routine. Cross-training combines different modes of training outside your primary sport, and it's especially popular among runners for its injury prevention and rehabilitation benefits, faster recovery times, and reduced burnout. It also helps keep your passion for running alive by challenging you with new activities.
Running's repetitive nature can lead to muscular imbalances, and by mixing in other activities, runners can correct that imbalance while building strength, endurance, and flexibility. If you're dealing with foot and ankle pain or back pain and sciatica, cross-training can be especially helpful. Good options include elliptical trainers, stationary bikes, cross-country ski machines, water running, and yoga, all of which mimic the muscles used in running while building overall strength and endurance.
Yoga builds strength, flexibility, and body awareness.
Yoga is an excellent choice for runners because it builds strength and flexibility in the lower body while remaining low impact. As a complement to physical therapy, yoga strengthens the core, which improves stability and helps guard against common running injuries like runner's knee and IT band syndrome. It also improves breathing awareness, an often-overlooked part of running that helps you regulate heart rate and pace so you can keep going longer.
Yoga poses stretch the hamstrings, hips, TFL, and quads, the areas that tend to become overworked during running, which helps relieve the tightness that can lead to injuries like hamstring strains or running-related lower back pain.
Strength training reduces injury and builds performance.
Strength training, also called weight lifting or resistance training, is a great option for runners looking to improve performance. As a general guideline, start with light weights and gradually increase the amount you lift, this prevents overtraining and injury. Strength training also increases lean body mass, which raises your metabolic rate and improves your body composition for running, helping you feel faster and stronger on race day.
It also increases endurance and can lower your risk of injury: one study found that runners who strength train reduced their injuries by as much as 50 percent. Strength work for runners should focus mainly on the lower body and core, the gluteals, hamstrings, quads, and hips, since these are the muscles that support running. Start with a routine that works for you, beginning with one or two sessions per week and building from there.
Mobility work keeps your joints moving freely.
Mobility work increases joint flexibility and function so you can move without pain or strain, in running and in everyday life. Sara Fabbri, director of the Running and Performance Center at the University of Michigan, notes that dynamic muscle movements are the most efficient way to build mobility. Compared to static stretching, dynamic exercise improves range of motion, restores elasticity in the joints, and helps lubricate them for easier motion.
A ten-minute mobility routine before or after your run is an easy way to work this in daily, and it may help you run longer and stronger. If you need professional guidance improving your mobility or addressing a running-related injury, our team at Tribeca Physical Therapy can help.