TIPS - Invest in technique, not in shoes

Once again a study is released which concludes that there is no correlation between the price of running shoes and their effectiveness at preventing injury. Many of you may have already heard me quoting earlier studies which came to the same conclusion.

So what is the secret to staying injury free?

There are several factors to this question including mileage, training intensity, rest intervals and training habits but nothing is more important than the actual technique of the runner. There are far too many programs out there that focus on covering a certain distance or running at a certain pace but not enough trainers are focusing on limiting the impact of running which we all know is the cause of almost all running related injuries.

If you've ever taken those expensive running shoes off and tried to run, you'll immediately find that you run very differently. No longer will you heel strike or step out in front of your centre of gravity, both would be too painful. What you will do is land in a more protective stance with your foot directly beneath you and much more on the ball of the foot.

There are a couple of major benefits to running this way when you put the shoes back on. Firstly it's your body's natural response to protect yourself from impact injuries. Secondly, as you are no longer landing on your heals, you are neutralizing the affect of pronation or supination (rolling of the foot throughout the motion of running). The benefit of having a neutral foot strike is that you are not putting additional stresses on your ankle, knee and hip joints by twisting to compensate for the jarring effect of a heal strike and again reducing your risk of injury.

At first it may seem like an unnatural way to run but once you work on increasing your cadence to compensate for the shorter stride, it will soon train your nervous system and become second nature.

The last concern is that by shortening your stride you will run slower but next time you're at a big race, watch the guys at the front. Most world class runners run at a cadence of 160-180 steps per minute. Their secret to running faster is to spend more time in the air and no-one has ever had an impact injury from being in the air.

Like my skydiving buddy once said, it's not the falling that will kill you, it's hitting the ground.

Run smooth.

About The Author

Tony Denford is a certified personal trainer and owner or Hit the Road. He has been training primarily runners since 2002 and has worked with beginners all the way to Boston Qualifier Marathon runners.

Tony emphasizes balance and variety in his training methods and always tries to make sure his client’s fitness routines are fun as well as beneficial.

Visit www.hittheroadrunning.com for more details on Hit The Road’s programs and services.

Canada Food Guide

A lot of my clients have been asking about the new Canada's Food Guide and what changes have been made to it. It's been over 14 years since the guide was reviewed and the new guide, published by Health Canada, has made changes to be more specific for different areas of the population. The old guide had listed the number of servings for each food group but was not specific to the sex or age of those following the recommendations.

The guide now splits the population into children, teens and adults with further breakdown by age and sex. This allows a differentiation for the number of servings for a male teen versus a female over 51 for example.

As we age our dietary needs change and so our eating habits should also reflect the needs of the body to remain healthy. The new guide recommends adults over 51 consume more milk products to help combat the growing risk of osteoporosis.

As well as updating the number of servings, the new guide also has an easier to follow guide to serving sizes. In North America, we often have a skewed view of serving sizes so it's here that most people need to review the guidelines. I often hear people say "I can't possibly eat 10 servings of fruit or vegetables per day" but when you look at the amount in a serving, it's not usually that hard.

The new guide also has guidelines for being active, eating well, how to read nutrition labels and information about limiting trans and saturated fats.

For more information on the Canada food guide, visit http://healthcanada.gc.ca/foodguide or click here to view the guide in PDF format.

About The Author

Tony Denford is a certified personal trainer and owner or Hit the Road. He has been training primarily runners since 2002 and has worked with beginners all the way to Boston Qualifier Marathon runners.

Tony emphasizes balance and variety in his training methods and always tries to make sure his client’s fitness routines are fun as well as beneficial.

Visit www.hittheroadrunning.com for more details on Hit The Road’s programs and services.

Train for Overall Fitness

Training your muscles is easy. Just perform some exercises and they will get stronger. If you want to do some sport specific training then you tend to train the muscles associated with that sport. This part of training is easy and well know by almost everyone but have you ever considered what other things you could do to improve your performance as well as your general quality of life?

There are four primary components of fitness:
- Cardiovascular Ability - How efficient your heart and Lungs are,
- Muscular Ability - How strong your muscles are,
- Flexibility - How much range of motion your joints can perform,
- Body Composition - How much body fat you have.

There are also a number of secondary components that not only affect your health but the quality of life that you possess. These components include:
- Balance
- Coordination
- Agility
- Reaction time
- Speed
- Power and
- Mental Capacity.

Just like the primary components, the secondary components can also be trained and the principals are not that different. The SAID principal, which stands for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands, means that if you put any of these components beyond their normal range your body will adapt to the new demands in a very specific way.

So how do you train your balance? Put your body in out-of-balance situations like standing on one leg or try trail running on uneven surfaces. This will help your body's proprioception which is your brains method of understanding where your body is in space and your nervous systems ability to get your body back into balance. The more outside stimuli you can remove from your perception of your position, the more trained your nervous system becomes and increases it's ability to be able to react to falls or slips.

One additional thing you need to be aware of is the fact that the nervous system fatigues more quickly than your muscular system and takes longer to recover. So if you would usually take a days rest between muscular workouts, you should allow at least two days between balance, coordination, agility and reaction time workouts.


About The Author

Tony Denford is a certified personal trainer and owner or Hit the Road. He has been training primarily runners since 2002 and has worked with beginners all the way to Boston Qualifier Marathon runners.

Tony emphasizes balance and variety in his training methods and always tries to make sure his client’s fitness routines are fun as well as beneficial.

Visit www.hittheroadrunning.com for more details on Hit The Road’s programs and services.

Get the most from your employees

North American society is getting sick. Every few days we hear reports of rising obesity rates, rising rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and stress. Walk into any office and you'll hear employees complaining about rising workloads or their employer taking advantage of them.

We all know that we need to eat better, exercise more and look after our health but the question is why so few people make it a priority.

Corporations have a legal responsibility to provide a safe workplace but also a social responsibility to provide a healthy workplace. If the only food available is chips and chocolate, I can guaranty that the employees will be eating it. If no opportunity is provided for employees to improve their health and fitness, chances
are they wont.

Employees feel they are working too hard, for too many hours and then spending too much time commuting. No wonder when they get home they don't think of making their fitness a priority. They are getting burned out and that's not good for them, their family, their employer, their community or society as a whole.

The cost of health care is also on the rise and our average age is rising so it's not going to get any better in the short term. Along with the rising cost of health care is the cost of insurance for employers.

The primary reason most employers do not provide any health programs to their employees is the perception that it will cost too much. Yes there may be an investment up front but money spent on corporate wellness pays dividends. Less sick time, more productive employees, lower health care premiums all easily pay for any up-front investment.

If employers want to get the most out of their employees they need to get creative with ways to encourage healthy lifestyles in their employees. Encourage your employees to take a walk at lunch by providing maps of walking routes for instance is an easy and cheep way to help your employees help themselves. Instead of offering donuts for meetings, offer something healthy.

Also employers should think beyond the easy little fixes as the benefits of a larger program would also be greater. Hit The Road...Running offers corporate running programs for beginners all the way to marathon runners. The programs run out of the companies office right after close of business and allows employees to take part before heading home. By building a corporate running team, employers can also get a lot of positive exposure at local races and events as well as around the neighbourhood where the business is located. Outfit your employees with t-shirts with your companies logo and you have an instant running billboard. Others will soon start to recognise that the employer values it's employees. The employees will have better communication and teamwork as well as a social aspect to their jobs which leads to better job satisfaction.

So how much will a program like this cost an employer? Very little; Most employers will just act as a host and allow the employees who are interested to pay for their own training. Just providing a meeting location will provide huge benefits to the employer. Other employers will opt to pay for the training as a benefit to employees but studies have found that when the employee pays for the training themselves, they tend to stick to it longer and get more out of it.

Want to add another major benefit? Try adding a charity component. Challenge your employees to run for your corporations favourite cause. The added commitment of fund raising often keeps people in the programs longer and gives them a sense of accomplishment. It also allows employers to benefit a good cause and meet their social responsibility.

Most people say that they would do more physical activity if it was more convenient so if your company can give people a program they want, when they want it the employees will jump at the opportunity and there's nothing for the employer to do but reap the benefits.

About The Author

Tony Denford is a certified personal trainer and owner or Hit the Road. He has been training primarily runners since 2002 and has worked with beginners all the way to Boston Qualifier Marathon runners.

Tony emphasizes balance and variety in his training methods and always tries to make sure his client’s fitness routines are fun as well as beneficial.

Visit www.hittheroadrunning.com for more details on Hit The Road’s programs and services.

What you can learn from running

Each time you run, no matter how hard the workout is, try to look for the positive that is a result from the run. If you're running against the wind remember that it will make you stronger. If the run seemed harder than usual remember that it still counts and still made you fitter. Always look for the positive and whenever possible, write it down. Many of you probably keep a log of your runs and this is a great idea but remember to write down not only how far and how fast but things like how you felt and weather conditions. After a while you will start to notice that you go through cycles of good runs and not-so-good runs.

Lot of things can influence the feel of your run, for example diet, stress level, amount of sleep, weather or illness. Make sure you write down as much info as you can and if you notice you run easy after a good 8 hour sleep and suffer when you only get 6 hours then maybe you can learn something about how your body reacts to these influences and adjust your own behaviour to make your life a little easier.

Your running can be a good barometer of these influences but your whole life can be affected by them so take note and make changes as needed.

About The Author

Tony Denford is a certified personal trainer and owner or Hit the Road. He has been training primarily runners since 2002 and has worked with beginners all the way to Boston Qualifier Marathon runners.

Tony emphasizes balance and variety in his training methods and always tries to make sure his client’s fitness routines are fun as well as beneficial.

Visit www.hittheroadrunning.com for more details on Hit The Road’s programs and services.

Running in snow and ice

There are a few important things to remember when running in snowy and icy conditions. Here are a few simple rules to help you avoid slipping and falling.

• Only do one of these things at a time: accelerating, decelerating and turning. Trying to turn while changing your speed can be disastrous and make you lose traction so slow down BEFORE you corner.
• Try to shorten your stride. This will help you recover if you do slip and also keeps your centre of balance over your planted foot. Another benefit is that taking faster steps can help to improve your VO2 Max and make you faster in the long run.
• Snow has more traction than ice so you're better to run in an inch of snow than not.
• If your neighbourhood tends not to clear it's sidewalk, find an area where the city maintains the walkways. Usually main non-residential roads are cleared by the city so at least the sidewalk is consistent.
• Go for a run in the country. There's usually a lot less traffic so it could be safe to run in the road as long as you're facing traffic and are prepared to dive into a snowbank if needed.
• If you live in an area with a lot of snow, try snowshoeing.
• Slow down. It's not worth doing your speed work in icy conditions. A broken leg will put you out for the whole season so use the winter to work on your base mileage, do some strength training or do your speed work indoors.

Most important is to use common sense but get out there and enjoy the cold. You'll be glad you did.

About The Author

Tony Denford is a certified personal trainer and owner or Hit the Road. He has been training primarily runners since 2002 and has worked with beginners all the way to Boston Qualifier Marathon runners.

Tony emphasizes balance and variety in his training methods and always tries to make sure his client’s fitness routines are fun as well as beneficial.

Visit www.hittheroadrunning.com for more details on Hit The Road’s programs and services.

Goal Setting

If you've gotten this far into the new year without setting some goals you are not alone. A vast majority of people do not set good goals for themselves and this trait is not helping them to realize their dreams.

I've written a lot before about goal setting but it's a good time to renew some of those ideas and if you're one of the many, start thinking about what's important to you.

Without a goal you cannot have a plan and without a plan you will not achieve great things. The first thing to do is think about what you want to achieve in the long run. Not this week or this month, maybe not even this year. Think about your ultimate goal. It could be to climb Everest or to do an ironman or run from coast to coast. Whatever it is, write it down and put it somewhere you will see it everyday.

Now you have your ultimate goal, start thinking about interim goals which will help you move in that direction. If your ultimate goal is to run a marathon, for example, set interim goals to run a 5K, 10K, half marathon etc.

Goals are good to have but there are several things you need to take into account when setting them. They must be achievable, specific and have a timeline. For example you could say that 'I want to be a runner' but this is not specific (what makes you a runner) and does not have a timeline (by when). A better goal would be 'I want to finish a 5K run within the next 3 months'. It's achievable, specific and has a timeline.

Now you have your interim goal, start out making the plan to achieve it. If you want to run 5K then you need to do some training so plan out how much time you have and can dedicate to achieving the goal. Be realistic with the plan and you can't fail. If your plan requires too much of your time or you think it's not achievable in the timeline you set, adjust the timeline.

If you are really a type 'A' personality you could be setting goals each and every day. Things you want to do that will move you towards your ultimate goal. Most people don't need to get into that much detail but having a plan for what you need to do in the next few days will be a big step to achieving your dreams.

About The Author

Tony Denford is a certified personal trainer and owner or Hit the Road. He has been training primarily runners since 2002 and has worked with beginners all the way to Boston Qualifier Marathon runners.

Tony emphasizes balance and variety in his training methods and always tries to make sure his client’s fitness routines are fun as well as beneficial.

Visit www.hittheroadrunning.com for more details on Hit The Road’s programs and services.