5 Easy Ways To Help Your Running That Aren't Running
Cause baby, we were born to run.
Uh, yeah, Anna, we were,
but there are other things you can do to help your running
that - wait for it - aren't running.
Stay tuned to find out the secret recipe to help you run faster and further,
but quickly, pause this video now and guess in the comments
what you think the five things are, then let us know afterwards if you were right.
And don't forget to subscribe to The Running Channel and tap on that bell icon
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when we release new videos all about running every single week.
First up: breathing. People often do breath work exercises to improve mental,
physical, and spiritual wellbeing. Whether you want to increase awareness,
reduce stress, improve mental sharpness, boost work performance,
or prepare for sleep, breath work or mindful breathing can help.
Now it might sound a bit basic,
but spending time doing breath work can really help your running too.
Fitter people tend to have lower respiration rates even while active and
return to low respiration rates
more quickly after activity. A normal respiration rate for a resting adult is
between 12 and 20 breaths per minute.
But this can vary from person to person and it will be higher when you exercise.
If you're looking to improve efficiency whilst running,
don't forget to add in some breath work.
You'll feel the benefits when you start to flag on harder efforts because taking
deeper slower breaths delivers more oxygen to your muscles. A really
easy place to start with breath work
if you've never done it before is by following one of the three different preset
activities on various Garmin devices: Tranquility, Coherence,
and Relax and Focus. Tranquility is
a 10 minute activity that aims to help get you in a ready state for sleep.
It slowly builds up until you can inhale for four seconds,
hold for seven seconds and exhale for eight seconds. Coherence
Is a 15 minute activity that should help you feel balanced and calm.
You gradually slow down your breathing until you can achieve an even six
second inhale and six second exhale.
Relax and Focus is another 15 minute activity meant to put you in a state of
focus and concentration. A good stress-buster,
this one. This is sometimes referred to as box breathing, or four-fold breath
as you work towards a 4, 4, 4, 4 breeding pattern.
That's a four second inhale, a four second hold, a four second
exhale and a four second hold.
There's also a five minute version of this activity,
which is suggested when you're watch detects unusually high stress spikes
and gives you a relaxed reminder alert.
When you finish,
your watch will display the duration of the activity, average heart rate during
the activity, and the detected change in stress from your breath work activity.
You can also review each activity in the Garmin Connect app to see graphs of
your respiration rate, stress and heart rate during the session.
If doing breath work exercises feels a bit awkward at first, don't give up,
as you get used to the patterns and learn to control your breathing better,
you'll start noticing the benefits more and more. Like any other exercise,
it takes practice.
Staying with the mindfulness and calm theme, and next on our list is yoga.
I tried yoga for the first time as a challenge for The Running Channel and
actually really enjoyed it.
Now, clearly yoga and running are opposite ends of the spectrum.
One is low impact and the other is high impact for a start,
but doing some yoga each week can really help improve your flexibility, range of
motion and muscle strength. In
fact, there's a lot of research out there to back this up. For example,
in a 2020 study published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic
Association,
it was found that mindful meditation and yoga led to an overall
downward shift in the distribution of depression and pain score.
There are many different types of yoga,
and if you're a bit overwhelmed with where to start,
there were plenty of follow along workouts on YouTube,
as well as being able to select pre-made workouts on certain Garmin
devices, including yoga for runners.
Not only that,
but they can also show you animated examples of how to perform each post too.
So basically your own yoga teacher on your wrist.
We've listed which devices you can do this on and how to find the workouts in
the description of this video.
Regularly getting enough quality sleep promotes good health can improve your mood and
helps maximize the benefits of exercise.
Sleep is the most accessible and cheapest recovery tool for runners that you can
get. It replenishes, repairs, and regenerate tissue that gets damaged
when you're running or working out.
Now, the National Sleep Foundation recommends seven to nine hours sleep for young
adults and adults, seven to eight hours sleep for older adults. However,
it's not unusual for athletes to get up to 10 hours of sleep in a night.
Amazing.
Now I tracked my sleep for 30 days on my Garmin and looked at the ways that
certain things impacted it like drinking alcohol, running late in the evening, and
eating a big meal close to bedtime.
The results were really interesting, and showed that the better my sleep was,
the more alert I was during the day. My concentration was better.
My running felt better too. If you want to learn more about how I got on,
then go and check out our video.
Supplementing your running training with strength and conditioning can reduce
your injury risk and help you run faster. This is because when done properly,
it corrects muscle imbalances and increases your running efficiency.
Strength training also builds core strength, which is particularly important for
distance runners.
A strong core will help with better posture whilst running, again
helping you to improve your running form and efficiency.
Garmin Connect has free pre-made workouts with step-by-step instructions that you
can download to your watch with a variety of difficulty levels,
durations, muscle groups, and activities.
And one of my favorites is the 15 minute full body sweat workout.
When you click into it to send it to your watch,
it gives you an overview of the workout, including the type,
the muscle groups it works, and whether you need equipment or not.
And in this case, you don't,
and each of the elements of the workout has an animated video to show you how to do
each exercise as well as written step-by-step instructions and
includes exercises like prisoner squats, burpees, and cross body
mountain climbers. They are tough. If you're anything
like me and get a bit stumped when you get to the gym with the intention to do a
strength and conditioning workout, but don't know where to start,
these workouts guide you through every step.
The final tool in your armoury when it comes to helping your running with ways that
aren't running is recovery. We've got
a whole video on The Running Channel, all about recovery runs and what they are,
but how do you know when to do them?
How much is too much for recovery? Ever noticed the Recovery
Advisor come up on your watch telling you
you need to take a certain number of hours or even days of recovery.
72 hour recovery, no time for this. You've got to half marathon tomorrow.
Well, the first thing to say is that it's not telling you not to run at all.
The Recovery Advisor is there to suggest the time you take until your next
hard workouts. In the meantime,
you can still do something like a recovery run or base miles,
which you'll see reflected in your suggested workout for that day.
If your watch supports that function, the
time can range from no hours to four days and is calculated using the
following information. The training effect of your completed activity,
the amount of time remaining on your recovery time countdown at the start of
your next activity, and Garmin's own algorithm.
Newer watches feature an improved recovery time algorithm that can
shorten the initial recovery time estimate by taking into account stress levels,
quality of sleep, additional training, intensity,
and daily activity levels.
In short, if you've done a hard workout,
your body needs time to adapt to it and recover,
So the Recovery Advisor is there to help you work out how long it should be
before your next hard workout.
A bad night's sleep will delay your recovery time, as will
a very active day,
even if you're not recording what you're doing as actual activities.
If you're wearing your watch,
it will still be able to measure your stress score and heart rate,
which will increase if you're on your feet all day.
Do you already do or take notice of any of the five things we've covered,
or maybe you're going to do this now,
after watching this video? Well tell us in the comments below,
and we'll see you next time here on The Running Channel.
