Hey everyone, it's Lucy Macdonald, your team physio, I wanted to check in and share
some advice with you today about how to train to optimise your immune system, so
at the moment we all need to stay as healthy as possible and I want this post
to really help you to know what you can do from an exercise perspective to
really boost your immune system, before I go on though what I want to
also do is apologise that I haven't seen you all for a couple of weeks, I have
been going through a transitional phase as we all have been and from my
perspective I've gone from having three clinics in central London to one
beautiful virtual clinic, so me and my team of merry physios and osteopaths are
now all working from our respective homes and have set ourselves up doing
video consultations so now all of our assessments and treatments are on video
link and they're going really well and we're trying to build up a community on
our Facebook group octopus clinic where we can share lots of our advice and
exercises about staying healthy and fit when you're at home and things that you
could be doing for your running over the next few months so please do come
and join us on our Facebook group as I say octopus clinic and I look forward
to supporting you over the next few months, in the meantime what can you be
doing to make sure that your immune system is is optimised, is ready for
whatever it needs to tackle? So the first thing is as I'm sure most of you have
established by now it's really important to stay well within your comfort zone
when you're training, so when you're training for an event
you're normally always pushing yourself a little bit further and further with
each training session, it might be that you're doing a little bit more of an
intense shorter session during the week or perhaps pushing yourself with a
longer run at the weekends and that's basically got to stop, the reason being
is that when you do that you do create a bit of micro trauma to the body and your
immune system therefore does suffer to some extent, so during this time it's
really important that you don't push yourself beyond your comfort zone so no
more long runs, no more pushing yourself intensity wise, just stay well within
that nice comfort zone, now what's great news is that as long as you do that
exercise is actually really good for your immune system so a little bit of
exercise every day will actually boost your immune system,
so please do carry on with your running, it's really important that you do carry
on with your running because that will actually help your immune system both
directly and indirectly by helping things like sleep and your mental health
which I'll talk a bit more about in a minute, so tone back your running but
don't stop your running and then focus a lot on recovery, so all of the things
that you've learnt over the last few months are going to stand you in really
really good stead for the months ahead in a different way to how you were
expecting but no less valuable, in fact more valuable, at this crucial time so
things like your nutrition, making sure that you're focusing on getting plenty
of fruits and vegetables, all your good fats, so things like nuts, seeds, oily fish,
all that kind of stuff, a really nice broad balanced diet but yes don't
underestimate the fruit and veg as well you'll probably find that you need to
reel back your calorie intake but I guess you've worked that one out already,
one of the easiest ways of boosting your immune system as well is to reduce
any toxins that are going into your body so making sure that you're still really
limiting your alcohol, limiting processed foods etc so so that your body's not
having to deal with coping with those things, so really looking at the
nutritional element of recovery and also the sleep side of things, so following
all the things that we all know about like making sure that you reduce your
screen time before bed, giving yourself some time to read or listen to some
relaxing music or play a board game or something before you go to bed so that
you're not looking at your screen because we know that that is a
significant factor in sleep and likewise the alcohol thing as well even one glass
of wine has been shown to have a negative impact on sleep so
bear that in mind, and then in terms of your mental health we know that your
immune system is directly linked with your mental health so if you are
particularly stressed or not managing your anxiety then we know that that will
have a negative effect on your immune system, so exercising is very valuable
for that but so are things like mindfulness, meditation, other gentle
exercises like yoga and obviously there's loads of stuff out there on the
internet about home yoga and home meditation that kind of thing, some
brilliant apps, so perhaps some of those things that you've heard of in the past
and have sort of thought ooh I'd like to have time to do those things,
now's the time to do it, I'm getting out into nature if you're like me and you
live in a city then it takes a little bit more creativity to
do that but somehow taking the government's guidelines of getting out
and exercising once a day, trying to somehow find some trees or some nature
that you can do that in will really help
your mental health, last but not least strength and
conditioning we know is really beneficial for runners from a
performance perspective and from an injury prevention perspective, but we
also know that strength conditioning is good for your immune system so this is
something that not many people know that actual resistance and strength work does
boost your immune system, so if doing it for running performance and
prevention of injury isn't enough then hopefully the benefits to your immune
system should get you motivated and getting into your strength and conditioning.
there's loads of stuff out there on strength and conditioning for runners, my
favourite exercises are squats, split squats, heel raises, but there's tonnes out
there, not to forget the core stuff and the alignment stuff like running man,
which if anyone I've ever met me before is as you know my favourite
exercise, so I hope that's helpful, my next video I'm going to talk about
breathing I think it's really important that we all start to learn a little bit
about how to breathe and good breathing exercises both from a preventative
perspective and if and when we do get the virus so I'm gonna do a video on
breathing and I'm also gonna do a video on how you can stay fit and healthy at
home and I would really love your suggestions so if you can let me know
the kind of things that you want to hear about and I will make sure I do some
videos on those topics, in the meantime please do follow us I really
am excited about building our Facebook community so octopus clinic is
what you need to search for and like and then I look forward to seeing you in our
next video and in the meantime, happy running!