A good way to increase the mechanical efficiency of running is by improving intermuscular coordination by working the muscle chains with functional exercises.
Here are some specific and essential exercises for runners that will help you in a practical way in your sessions but, before beginning to describe each one of them, keep these tips in mind when executing them:
Tips for training
- Perform a prior warm-up with wide mobility exercises, especially in the shoulder girdle, hips, knees, and spine, and with cardiovascular exercises that raise the heart rate.
- In many exercises, postural control is more appropriate than strength. If possible, check your posture with the mirror.
- It controls the eccentric phase (the one that goes in favor of gravity, or braking), especially in movements with speed and inertia.
- When you use free weight and high intensity, training with a partner, in addition to assisting you and being more confident, it will motivate you.
- Try to perform strength exercises without fatigue, always force first, or in different sessions.
- Respect the recovery, the loading time is as important as the recovery time, also take into account your rest days, they are part of the training.
- Concentrate on what you are doing, visualize the muscles involved, and pay attention to your body positions, angles, and where you locate the effect of the exercise. It is not appropriate to train by chatting or distracting yourself with anything.
# 1 Squat with fitball
The one-leg squat rolling with fitball, in addition to improving strength, will improve your proprioception.
# 2 loaded with dumbbells
With those loaded with dumbbells, you will get an improvement of the strength in the rear chain. To perform them, stand up holding a disk or weight with both hands, do a squat holding the dumbbell in front of the body and lift it upwards, fully extending your arms, and then do the squat again.
# 3 Proprioception
Jumping on an unstable surface, such as bosu, improves reactive strength, and proprioception.
# 4 Core: Side plank with twist
Lie on your side on a mat with only two points of support: the arm and the foot. Extend your opposite arm upwards and hold the posture for a few seconds with the entire midsection under tension. To add difficulty, raise the unsupported leg and hold it up for a few seconds.
# 5 Core: backgrounds
Grab two dumbbells and position yourself as if you were going to do dumbbell dumbbells and alternately raise your knees. This way you will get a specific work of the core muscles.
# 6 Rear chain
Position yourself as if you were going to do dips again, but this time rest your feet on a fitball in prone support. The exercise consists of maintaining a posture similar to that of “the wheelbarrow.” In this way, you will work the entire posterior chain.
# 7 Zigzag bleachers
Perform zig-zag steps up and down, in addition to working the power of your legs, you will raise your anaerobic threshold.
# 8 Jumps without hands
In front of a bench or bleachers, jump up with your feet together without using your hands to locate leg work. Next, jump down to do plyometrics work, developing the eccentric force.
# 9 Jumping lunges
The jump stride is a great exercise to strengthen the lower body, although there is a great variety such as the weighted vertical jump, athletic press, or step jump.
# 10 Tensioners
To perform strength outdoors, there is nothing better than tensioners, rubber bands, and elastic bands. Try performing shoulder girdle twists by tying one end of the rubber band to a lamppost and holding the other with both hands. Other interesting exercises: perform a pullover flexing your spine while raising one knee, lateral crunch to locate the obliques and front crunch to work the entire anterior chain.
