The third and final installment of our Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff series focuses on stretching and massage, and how it can benefit your training.
Stretching & Massage
You must stretch and massage your muscles! All that ground and pound often comes at the expense of tight muscles and hips. A good stretching and massage programme is often neglected when it comes to training for a runners, this is a HUGE mistake! Training leg muscles for running power is effective only if you also maintain their flexibility. Tight hips, hamstrings and quadriceps result in reduced stride length, elasticity and movement efficiency.
In my first article, The Runner’s Fencepost, we touched upon the importance of efficiency and how the more efficient we are at something, the less energy we generally expend doing it. If we can increase our stride length by a few inches & run a 10k in 250-500 less strides than before we began incorporating stretching into our programme, this is going to have a huge impact on performance.
Here are some of the best stretches for runners:
Kneeling Lunge Stretch
Lateral hip stretch
Promote lost Dorsi Flexion
When running or walking on flat surfaces most of the time our foot is either flat or in a toe pointed down (Plantarflexed) position, as a result of this, our toes pointing up range of motion (Dorsiflexion) is often compromised.
Quadriceps and plantarflexion
This is a great stretch to open the quadriceps and promote plantarflexion within the ankle if restricted. This one is also very popular for swimmers to promote ankle flexibility.
As with all stretches it’s important not to take it too far. Take it very easy & if any pain is felt terminate the stretch immediately. I find it useful to think of a scale of 1-10 in my head 1 being very easy, 10 being “you’re going to tear a muscle.” Take yourself to a 7/10 and hold for 30 seconds to a minute without too much discomfort or bouncing. Our breathing is usually a good indicator of whether we’re in the right range here. If we’re having to hold our breath we’ve gone too far, dial it back and look for that 7/10, breathe as normal.
Squeeze these stretches in for 5 mins before and after your runs & to be even more time efficient, between sets in the gym instead of scrolling through Facebook!
Best massage kit
These can be picked up cheap as chips and are one of the best investments you can make when it comes to promoting your recovery post run, spend 5-10 minutes rolling out after your run and aim to be consistent, just like brushing your teeth 28 minutes of brushing once on a Sunday can’t make up for 2 minutes twice a day.
If you have a few more quid, you can upgrade to a massage gun…these are becoming cheaper and cheaper as more models hit the market.
And finally, the next best thing to a sports massage:
Compression trousers, still somewhat in their infancy I’m afraid and used by many professional athletes and sports clubs, so expect to pay a little more!
To conclude:
Many of the training programmes out there for runners focus primarily on making the main running muscles stronger and generally forget about the small details which, when taken care of, allow the main muscles to ‘indirectly’ become even more efficient at what they do. With little to no direct training, couple this with a good stretching and massage programme to improve your economy and you’ll be completing Iron Mans in your sleep.
Again, imagine trying to build a house on quicksand: that’s essentially what you’re doing when neglecting your foundation! Switch up your training and focus a large proportion of your time in the gym, on sweating the small stuff and building a solid foundation upon which to build from.
Finally, Imagine having 10 marbles, each marble represents a unit of energy in our lower body. When the small stuff isn’t trained, greedily they take 4 of those marbles leaving the larger muscles to use the other 6. Now imagine strengthening the small stuff, now instead of needing 4 units, they can diet and get by on 3, freeing up a marble for our bigger running muscles who are now feasting on 7 units, and so on…
These extra marbles translate to serious performance!
Stay consistent & great!
Sign up for the Great Bristol Run before 12pm on 28 April, or take part in the virtual run series!