Common Running Mistakes & How To Avoid Them

All runners make mistakes at some point within their training most certainly within their racing too and in some cases, we repeat those mistakes over and over again myself included so today I thought we could take this opportunity to reflect upon those mistakes learn from them so that we don't make the same mistakes again okay let's start with your train is now most people take somewhere

 

Between 1,000 and 2,000 steps per mile when they're running and if we think about a 10-kilometer run and we take that upper end of 2,000 steps per mile to equate that over the 10 kilometers that works out at 12,000 420 steps throughout a 10k now let's take a moment and think about our trainers during that is a lot of pounding of the pavement treadmill or trails or whatever you're running on so that does highlight the need to have correctly

 

Fitting trainers and trainers that work well for your gait but we also need to consider the lifetime and the wear of your train is now I'd love to say that your pieces of training going to last you forever and ever but I'm afraid that simply isn't the case typically that allows somewhere between 450 and 550 miles beyond that point we start to find that they become less supportive and less cushioned both of which can lead to niggles and injuries which ironically

 

Can end up costing you more money as you try to sort out those niggles and injury so do yourself a favor and keep an eye on the wear of your trainers now when you get in go run it could be all too easy to get excited and end up doing too much too soon many mistakenly think that more is better when it comes to running but before they know it they're on the sidelines dealing with an injury instead try to be conservative in terms of how often you run and how far you run

 

Particularly so when you're starting we often advise following the 10% rule so you never increase a run by more than 10% in terms of the mileage or the duration and also from week to week this will allow your body time to recover adapt and develop are you a one root kind of person perhaps you figured out a perfect 5k from the door of your house so you just do that over and over again okay fundamentally there's nothing wrong

 

With that and I can understand it is probably really time-efficient but what I would say is that there is more to running than that go and explore and enjoy its great fun I do also appreciate some people are limited with their route choices there aren't so many routes readily available to them but something to consider if you are doing the same route over and over again and perhaps it's on quite a hard surface the tarmac pavement sidewalk

 

That's a lot of repeated impact through the joints but if you can mix up that terrain perhaps you a little bit of off-road trail and on the sidewalk that is going to be much better if your body okay big mistake that I used to make and still do make from time to time particularly so when I'm getting tired is overstrode you know what I mean by over striding is that we're landing heel first with our leg out in front of our

 

Body's center of gravity now this causes a couple of issues one of which is that Bailando of our heel first that is essentially like a braking force but that also creates a big issue it sends a lot of force up through the leg they can result in injuries such as in splints stress reactions even stress fractures now to prevent this you want to try and land on your midfoot underneath your body now when we are over strapped in which we're trying to

 

Prevent doing what we're trying to do there is take really big steps we want to reduce that so the tip here is actually to imagine that you're running on hot coals are you trying to take really like quick steps so you don't burn the soles of your feet similarly to doing too much too soon we've also got those that like to go out too fast now heaven and Fraser seem to think that this is me down to tea

 

I have no idea what they're all about now I do understand though that when you're in a race and everyone's going off at breakneck speeds around you can be very hard to restrain yourself and hold yourself back but what I would say if you can stick to your game plan stick to your pace it's amazing how many of those people you will pass later on in the race and the satisfaction of doing so so stick to your race your pace not someone else's

 

Have you ever got halfway around to run perhaps as far away from home as you can be and realize that you're lacking fuel your bonky or perhaps you're dehydrated yeah it is not a pleasant feeling and nor is it good for you in the long run because actually by bonking lacking fuel getting dehydrate it's putting a lot of stress on your body of meaning that's going to take a lot of time to recover from so to prevent this you want to be thinking about

 

Fueling up or taking some hydration on around one to two hours before you plan to run it's going to allow your body time to process that perhaps even factoring in a little loose stop before you run and if needs be take some fuel and some fluids with you and of course make sure you do the same when you get back from your run now when I first started running I used to carry my shoulders a bit like a boxer it's something I see a lot of people do

 

Basically, they're right up around my ears they're really tense that restricted my movement it restricted my breathing and restricted my arm courage and wasted a lot of energy instead you want to be relaxing those shoulders down trying to carry your arms approximately around 90 degree bend in your elbow from your forearm to your upper arm now as you're running what I found helps is making a little bit of a mental checklist of your

 

Upper body so you think about relaxing your jaw relaxing your shoulders and thinking about that swing in your arms another thing that I found helped is actually just dropping my arms down occasionally really floppy and then just bringing in a backup into those 90 degrees Bend okay I'm going to tackle another technical point here but I'm going to refrain from calling it a mistake because it's actually kind of perfectly

 

Normal but it's just something to be mindful of and try and progress from with time and that is dragging your feet now if you ever watch an elite-level runner you'll see that they lift their knee quite high I'm not talking quite as high as sprinters like Usain Bolt there is a high knee lift and that is helping with the drive phase of the running now the key muscle within this knee lift is our hamstring because that helps to pick

 

That foot up behind so to work on this I'll suggest doing a few slow drills and that's going to help work on that form you can also do a few exercises in the gym to strengthen the glutes and the hamstring to hold that form well particularly so under fatigue all right and my final mistake and it's a pretty big and common one and that is not warming up come on own up how many of you quite regularly head out at the door at quite a pace with

 

Zero warmer yeah I know you're out there now the problem here is that your muscles are cold they're less supple and they're less active and that is putting you at a far greater risk of injury and also not forgetting the fact that it's just not setting you up well for that workout and making sure that you're getting the most and the best quality out of that now the absolute ideal is do a light dynamic warm-up or exercises before you

 

Actually, head out at the door failing that though you can just use the first one two or three kilometers of Iran and just do it at a nice easy pace to warm the body up gradually now, in the same manner, we've also obviously got the cooldown and how many of you just finish a runner are very happy just to sit down and have it done and dusted problem here is that you're not flushing the body of the toxins and bringing your heart rate down

 

That's going to actually increase your recovery time and perhaps even have a knock-on effect for future runs so if you can just hang in there do a couple of minutes at the minimum just a nice easy pace just to bring that heart rate down gradually now, I hope you have enjoyed today's Blog if so hit that thumbs up button if you'd like to see more Blogs from GTN you can click on the globe on screen right now and you can subscribe our newsletter 

 

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