- For stronger running as you get older,
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(logo crackles) Staying injury free
is the key to running fit
and healthy into your 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond.
In this video, I've got three exercises
which will help you to build strength
to protect areas that often become injury trouble spots
as we get older.
Let's get started.
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So let's start out with an exercise for your calf muscles.
This is an area that runners in general injure quite often,
but particularly as you get older,
it seems to be an area that is more commonly injured.
So it makes sense to be doing a little bit more
strength work for your calves preventatively.
Let me take my shoe off quickly,
and you'll be able to see a lot better.
So we're gonna start out with a foot straight on the step.
This could be a bottom step of a flight of stairs.
From here, we're gonna drop the heel down,
and come up onto your toes.
Down on the count of one, up on the count of one.
One, one,
one, one.
Now, if you want to really target either one
or the other of the heads of the muscle,
we can start to turn the position on the foot.
So if we turn the foot out,
and that really is just the case
of turning your whole body out, rooted to the step,
then you'll see that as you come down,
and the heel drops below the step your foots supernates,
and then you're gonna come up
you're gonna push out that supernate position,
you're gonna come down again,
one, one,
working through, 25 reps.
Now, in the other direction,
so we're turning towards the step,
our foot again is at roughly 45 degrees to the step,
still on the balls of the feet, can come from here,
and as you drop down,
the foot's going to pronate somewhat more
and you're gonna have to push outta that pronate position
which is actually a little bit harder.
Okay, and up, having to work through
medial head of gastroc, that little bit harder,
again, building up to 25 reps of that as well.
Do you do this sort of exercise regularly?
I'd like to know, let me know down in the comments.
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(screen whooshes) The next area
we're going to focus on is the lower back,
and the muscles of the lower back,
they tend, as we age, to start to lose
a little bit of strength,
and that can of course translate into, really,
a kind of loss of core strength
and a loss, particularly posturally,
of the ability to run stronger for longer,
maintaining good posture, good form.
So we need to work on that.
And it's a very simple exercise
I'm gonna show you which targets the lower back,
also allows us to use our glutes
and start strengthening those.
So big bang for the buck with this one.
Now we're gonna start out in this skydiver position here.
From this position, I don't simply want you
to lift up kind of almost sort mindlessly
into this position 'cause you know what
the end position looks like,
I want to work through a sequence.
So first things first,
hands just a round about eye level,
just to add a little bit of stability
as you start to work with the lower body.
I want to keep your toes on the ground
but I want to straighten your knees as you start
to just squeeze your butt,
okay, you should feel those glutes begin to kick in.
From there I want you to keep that squeeze of the butt,
draw your belly button in, lift your feet off the ground.
Now we're really feeling those glutes working.
Now, we lift the upper body, lift the chest off the ground,
lift the hands off the ground.
In this position, you should feel your lower back kick in,
were just gonna hold for 10 seconds,
keeping the legs as straight as you can, and down.
And we do 10 times, ten second holds,
and you can modify the position of the arms
to actually make it easier or harder for yourself.
So if you wanna make it easier, go hands down,
by your hips, much easier.
If you want to make it harder,
your hands ahead of you in this kinda Superman position.
I really feel that in my back.
Okay, and down, last 10 seconds.
10 times ten second holds,
you really feel your lower back starting to work.
If there's any pain, of course, stop.
You should really know the difference
between kinda muscular working type ache,
which is a a good thing,
versus muscles starting to really kinda spasm
and you start to feel pain, in which case, as I say, stop.
Next up, we need to do a little bit of work
to look after those knees.
As runners, we all know, the knee injuries
are one of the most common types of injuries.
So whether it's ITB syndrome, patellofemoral pain,
your classic kind of runner's knee,
or even if we're looking at, as we get older,
perhaps there's some arthritic change
that's happened with the knees
and we need to kind of work on looking after,
protecting the knees by strengthening
all the muscles around the knee.
Great way of doing that
is our various different squat variations.
We're gonna look at the single leg squat today
because it's, again, massive bang for buck for us runners.
It's strengthening, but it's also stability,
and I want to show you a couple of variations.
So, simple single leg squat.
Again, we don't need to go into a pistol squat,
we don't need to go bum to ground,
we're simply working through the kind of range of motion
that us runners work through,
which is this kind of mini squat, here.
Okay, if we're in this position, and then back up,
working through three sets of 15,
slowly, with control,
you're gonna start to feel your quads working,
you're gonna start to feel your glutes working,
your foot in the shoe, or barefoot,
it's up to you, but you'll feel
that you're having to constantly adjust
to maintain stability.
Now, the knee's kind of stuck in between
a very mobile complex foot and ankle,
and a very mobile complex, the hip.
So to provide stability,
given that the knee really wants to be nicely aligned,
we're gonna have to have a lot of control
around those two areas.
That means that the calves are gonna work
and those deep kinda stabilizer muscles in the lower leg
and of the foot, but also those muscles finding stability
around the hip, particularly your glutes.
Now you see a lot of people doing single leg squats
where they reach forward with the other leg.
Look at the amount of hip flexion here,
bend, if you like, here,
in comparison to when I reach back with the other leg.
Okay, this position, getting into hip flexion,
where I'm deep in the squat,
and I've got more flex position here,
it's going to help me really fire up those glutes
and get them working harder.
So the way I tend to cue runners to do it
is to reach the leg back behind them slightly,
as you reach the hands forwards, okay, slow and controlled.
That gives you a nice counterbalance,
you'll push your butt back, load those glutes,
and from there, up and through,
little clench of those glute muscles at the top,
and you'll feel, after you're doing 10, 15 of those
on each side, three times through,
your glutes will have had a good workout.
Show you side on,
so you can get more of a kind of a side-on profile
of what's going on, but I wanna show you front on as well
because control of the position of the knee
is critical here.
What I don't want to see,
is as people come down into a single leg squat
the knee drifts inwards, or flares outwards,
we're looking to keep the knee pointing forwards
over the second toe, the whole way through the movement.
So we're down, and then we're up.
Now, a nice way of making life a little easier for yourself
is either position yourself next to a wall,
or you can even turn it into
a little Bulgarian split squat here,
where you've got the back foot elevated
on what could be a chair or in this case a box,
and you're simply going to keep the weight on the front leg,
but you are using the back leg just provide
a little bit of stability as you come down to up.
Again, you can work through three sets of 15 on each side,
slow and controlled.
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The thing about big bang for the buck exercises like these
is that you don't need to disrupt your training week
with finding time for specific long gym workouts
to get them done.
I'm a strong believer in the little
and often approach to this type of injury prevention work.
If you just spend 10 minutes doing these exercises,
after two or three of your runs each week
you'll quickly feel the benefit.
I say after your run, as opposed to before,
as I don't want you to pre-fatigue key muscle groups
like your calves and quads before you go out and run,
as that could be a recipe for injury in itself,
which is obviously exactly the opposite
to what we're trying to do.
You've gotta be smart about these things.
Next, make sure you watch the top video,
on screen right now, for solutions to the biggest problem
with running as you get older,
or click the one below to get up to date
with my sub three marathon by 40 challenge.
I'll see you over there.