Successful Running Program

A few friendly hints for a successful running program:

• Make sure your volume grows sensibly and progressively. We want to avoid building volume too quickly (as this places you at risk of an overuse injury because your bones/tendons struggle to keep up with the demands you place on them) or erratic spikes and dips in your weekly/monthly load (which is also shown to increase injury risk, but can also reduce the effectiveness of your program long-term).
• Respect recovery. Training provides a stimulus for change in the body but it's your recovery where these changes occur. If you train too frequently you risk blunting the recovery process and therefore minimising adaptation/improvement. You also run the risk of overtraining syndrome, which can involve illness or injury risk. As a general rule, the harder the session = the more recovery time required.
• Vary your training sessions. This will partly depend on the type of event you're training for. Long runs, tempos, intervals etc. all play an important role in your overall conditioning in different ways. Too much of one stimulus may lead to deficiency in other areas which could impact your performance on race day. Understand and respect the purpose of each type of training.
• Do not ignore aches and pain. Endurance athletes are great at doing this and it's to our own detriment. Knock these things on the head before they invariably become bigger issues later down the track. Overuse injuries can be managed easily if treated early.
• Get strong. Volume is the most important component of a training program but if you're not strong enough to manage this volume then it's a waste. Runners who engage in strength training see better performance and fewer injuries. As few as 1-2 sessions per week of slow, heavy resistance training can provide enough stimulus for you to benefit.

Our team of Exercise Physiologists are here to help with all of the above. Call us on 9783 9990 or book online.