The Running Shoes

Running. It’s the exercise goal that many people want to be able to do, and for a lot of good reasons. It’s famous for its dramatic benefits to cardiovascular health and weight loss, but it doesn’t stop there. Running causes your body to produce a powerful anti-aging element known as the Human Growth Hormone. This is a substance that celebrities pay a lot of money for and take every day to help keep themselves looking young. It will also improve your bone health, making your bones stronger and able to handle more stress, helping to prevent bone-related diseases later in life.

Unfortunately, as well known as running is for its health benefits, it’s also almost equally as famous for its rate of quitters. Every day thousands of people decide to take up this health-boosting activity, but there are very few people who stick with it long enough to really receive the benefits. They get outside and start running, only to find that in a very short amount of time they are exhausted, out of energy, and completely winded. It seems like this is an impossible task, and they feel that they are just too out of shape to tackle it. The issue here, however, doesn’t come from running itself – it comes from people not preparing themselves and going about it all wrong.

You can’t simply go straight outside and start running cold turkey. Not only is it incredibly difficult, but your body won’t realize any weight loss benefits at all, and only minimal other benefits. This is significant – research has shown that at least 60% of people who decided to take up running did so because they wanted to lose some weight. How is it possible? It’s simple – if your body isn’t conditioned towards physical activity, it won’t burn fat. Instead, it will burn other, more easily accessed fuels such as sugar. These sources of energy are quickly used, and before long, a person finds themselves out of gas and breathing heavily. They have only been running for a short period of time, but already can go no further. This builds up the task of running in their minds as impossible and even more difficult than it really is, when in fact, they simply haven’t gone about it the right way for their body to handle the task.

The trick is to start small. Don’t begin by running at all. Go outside, do your stretches, and take a very long walk. By doing this, your body isn’t going to turn to high-output energy solutions because it’s doing something it’s more used to. It can then access deeper resources of energy, such as glucose, or fat. More importantly, your body is building up its stamina. After a day or so of taking a long walk, take a long, quick walk. Pick up your stride a little and try to maintain it. The goal is to get your body slowly more accustomed to a harder work load. Push yourself, but don’t overdo it. When you’ve been walking at a certain pace for a bout a week or so, pick it up again. Your first goal is to get to power walking. You want to eventually be able to walk at a very fast pace for long periods of time. When you are finally able to accomplish this, keep it up for a month or so. Then start introducing jogging into your routine gradually. Power walk for a few minutes, and then jog for thirty seconds to a minute. Ease yourself into it.

Procrastination is the biggest enemy of exercising, so make sure you start walking as soon as you possibly can. For you to be able to exercise effectively you must allow running to become a common routine. Don’t put it off. – Make sure you have a habitual schedule that you follow, even if it’s only for a short time each day. Once you start procrastinating and making excuses, your efforts are going to be completely ruined before you ever even start. Exercising takes extreme discipline, and while it may be an enjoyable thing to do, a person has to be determined to do it.

Running is a fantastic way to boost your health, appearance, and energy in one simple exercise. It’s a great way to get outside and experience the beauty of the outdoors while you strengthen your bones, heart, and make yourself feel better. Just make sure you ease yourself into it, and don’t overdo it. Stick with it, and you’ll reap the rewards of an exercise that burns more calories than almost any other exercise available and is completely free.

By: Cole Carson

jogging

Everything there is about it is wrong. You either run or you walk. Jogging as a warm-up – NOT!; Jogging as a workout – NOT!! In my opinion jogging should be outlawed. Jogging is something the English invented and America adopted and eventually created a compulsive passion for in their attempt to get. Do you get the idea I have an opinion on this matter. You have no idea. There have been times of near madness that while observing the bad posture, painful looking, laboring, pounding foot strikes of a bad jogger running alongside the slanted, pitted edge of the road in a cloud of car exhaust as I drove up on them and for that brief moment I actually believed I would be doing them a favor by running them down and putting them out of their misery. So far I haven’t snapped.

If you know how to run it surely can be used as a part of a fitness program. If you are an athlete involved in pivotal sports, there are much better alternatives than running slow for a long period of time. Joggers’ intentions are honorable in finding an activity to improve or maintain their fitness, but when an activity is damaging important parts of your body in a cumulative fashion an argument for finding an alternative arises without much of an intelligent come back available.

There is a significant difference between running and jogging. Running is efficient, graceful, light footed, balanced and a biomechanical sound movement. Jogging is characterized by various degrees of incorrect movement techniques and posture. Posture is rarely close to acceptable ranging from hunched over and placing., tremendous stress on the thoracic and cervical spine to running ramrod erect with a pronounced hyper extension of the cervical spine which magnifies the compressive force on the lower back. Running: Personally, I am not a fan of distance running for fitness. Ice, uneven grades, foot, ankle, knee, hip, low back, neck pounding repetitions on hard surfaces, and car exhaust are a few of the negative impacts associated with running. On the other hand, I know many people enjoy it and it is a cost free form of exercise that can be done outdoors. Notice I stated that I am not a fan of distance running as opposed to running. A major portion of my all around training is running intervals on a track or a field. As with all the areas of fitness, maintaining good technique is the key to safety and performance. When running intervals I am using the muscles of the body to challenge the ground with each step, minimalizing concussive force in the joints up the length of my body.

Running is a world away from jogging. Two completely different animals. Jogging is characterized by various methods and degrees of ill form. Joggers can demonstrate a posture that ranges from having an hyper-extension of the lower bask to being hunged over, carry their arms too high, land heavily on the heel, and have their feet turning inward or outward. Such form uses excess energy and magnifies the impact of the each footstike, twising ankles, knees and hips as well as providing dangerous compressive impact to your spine, especially the lumbar area.

A well trained runner can move much faster than a jogger, yet experience much less impact due to a smooth form that minimizes vertical motion, and which doesn’t exhibit the heavy rear-foot landing during the footstrike. Think about it!

By: Greg Alario

There is some controversy as to whether or not running or walking is the better exercise. Each form of exercise has its own pros and cons. If you are wondering whether or not you should be running and exercising, you may want to consider the positive and negative aspects of each before you choose one.

Consider Doing Both

Keep in mind that a lot of people feel as if doing a workout that is a combination of both is ideal. Walking provides excellent cross training for running and vice versa. And that way you can reap the benefits of both. If the workout includes alternating bursts of running and walking you can get the best of both worlds.

Risk of Injury

It is important to note that it seems that runners have a higher risk of injury than walkers. Running is a higher impact sport than walking is. If you have joint problems or are struggling with constant injuries, walking is the better choice. If you walk at a fast pace, you will still burn adequate calories.

Weight Loss Considerations

At first glance, it may seem as if running can help you lose weight. This is partially true. Runners tend to burn more calories because they go faster. However, if a walker is focused on going at a fast clip, they could also burn enough calories to lose weight. With walking, it is easier to get complacent.

Examining a Duke Study

There was a study done at Duke University that attempted to analyze which is better for weight loss, running or walking. The end result of the study was that the two were nearly identical. The key is that the walkers need to maintain a fast pace and not reduce their stride to a stroll. However, runners and joggers experienced better protection against heart disease.

Running Burns More Calories

You can’t escape the fact that running burns more calories. The current lore is that walking a mile and running a mile burns approximately the same amount of calories. However, runners will complete that mile a lot quicker than the average walker. So, thirty minutes of running will burn a lot more calories than thirty minutes of walking. Despite the results that the Duke study indicates, running should help you lose weight quicker.

Health Benefits of Exercise

But no matter which activity you ultimately choose, running or walking, the important thing to remember is that leading an active life is important to building an overall state of health. The key to staying healthy is to keep moving.

By: Gray Rollins

Running with knees that hurt and are not getting better trough time is no fun, and being addicted to running doesn’t help either.

Fortunately, pain isn’t always a definite sign of tissue damage; instead it can be protective pain that is coming from entities called myofascial trigger points.

Pain from trigger points can feel like its coming from knee joint or patellae, while it’s actually coming from contraction knots in the quadriceps muscles.

What makes things quite enigmatic is that these knots can sometimes reside high in quadriceps muscles, far from where the actual pain symptom is felt.

It’s not uncommon for knee pain to be solely or partially muscular. It’s also common for doctors to overlook trigger points as a possible pain cause, because at this point there is no imaging equipment in use, which could verify their existence.

For now, only way to find out if trigger point are part of the pain equation, is manually palpating and searching for them from the muscles. There are not many doctors who do this, or know how to do this, or think that it’s even beneficial to do this.

Fortunately finding and treating trigger points is quite easy, and you don’t need an expert to do it for you.

You just find tender spots which refer pain to your knee when pressed, from those muscles that are reported to be involved in knee pains.

Usually, even a few days of self-massage to those points, can make them stop referring pain to your knee area. And make it evident that they where indeed behind the pain.

Finding and massaging trigger points in the quadriceps and calf muscles, and the small muscles behind the knee( Plantaris & popliteus), should give you good results.

by Karri Koivula

running

Here’s a Running Tip from http://www.ordinaryrunner.com for each letter of the alphabet!

Follow these, and you’ll be a wiser runner!

Ask questions.

Never stop learning. There are no stupid questions. Contact us at http://www.ordinaryrunner.com.

Balance.

Running is not all there is to life. Keep family, friends, and faith!

Carry a bandana!

Fold it over your waistband. Good for wiping sweat, and wiping other places in the event of a detour into the woods in the event of a sudden attack of Runner’s Trots.

Diet wisdom!

60% carbohydrates, 25% fat, 15% protein. A high fat diet will destroy your ability to run.

Exercise your right to run!

There is freedom in covering ground under your own power. Appreciate it!

Fun!

That’s what being an Ordinary Runner is all about!

Go racing!

Getting ready for a race is one of the most motivating aspects of running.

Hydration.

Drink, drink, drink. Your body is mostly water! Keep it that way!

Increase mileage slowly.

When you’re adding mileage, never increase more than 10% a week. This helps to avoid injury.

Just keep moving!

This is the theme song of the Ordinary Runner. We may not be the fastest or sleekest, but we keep moving forward.

Keep a journal.

You’ll be amazed what you’ll learn about yourself, and how quickly you learn what works and what doesn’t work… just by writing it down.

Limping is bad.

If something is hurting bad enough to make you change your stride, you need to rest. Remember RICE for injuries: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.

Make friends!

Some of your best friends will be people you meet at races or training groups.

Notice the world around you.

Don’t develop the bad habit of simply watching the ground in front of your shoes. Don’t forget to look around and see the world while you’re running!

Only for running!

Only wear your running shoes to run in, not to wear around during the day. You’ve got to keep those midsoles springy! This avoids injury.

Pounds!

Watch the pounds come off! If you just keep moving and stay consistent in your running, you WILL lose weight!

Quilt frequently.

Just seeing if you’re still paying attention. (I bet you think I don’t know a running tip that starts with a “Q”!)

Rotate shoes.

Use 2 pairs of shoes to keep the midsoles fresh. Use the shoe with lower miles for longer runs, and the high mileage shoe for shorter ones. This avoids injuries.

Shoes!

They are your MOST IMPORTANT piece of equipment. Buy quality, and take care of them. I can’t stress this enough. Quality shoes are a must!

Trim your toenails.

Long toenails are a surefire way to get “black toe.” (That’s when your toenail turns solid black from pounding on the end of your shoe!)

Use a heart rate monitor.

Not only will you learn quickly about your heart rate info, but you’ll have a lot of fun. A great piece of technology!

Vacation!

Yes, you need a vacation occasionally, even from running. A week long break once a year will do wonders for your muscles AND your mind.

Wicking materials!

Especially your socks! Keeping sweat away from your feet avoids blisters and Athlete’s Foot. Keeping it away from your torso avoids getting too hot in summer, and too cold in winter.

X-Ray it!

If an injury keeps you from running, and persists, see a doctor! You don’t want to develop a stress fracture!

Yikes! Don’t run from dogs.

Face a dog, make yourself as big as you can, use a big voice. Back away slowly until he loses interest. If he doesn’t lose interest, zig when he zags!

Zero calories in liquids.

If you’re trying to lose weight in general, or training for a race, this is one of the quickest ways to lose it! Don’t drink anything that has calories!

And that’s the Running Tip, from A to Z!

by Kely Braswell

running tips