Tag: stretching

Training Tip: Upgrade Your Warmup with Dynamic Stretching
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My hamstrings have been awfully cranky lately. Am I sitting too much? Am I now officially decrepit? I’m familiar with the hamstring stiffness that comes from sitting at a desk all day, but usually it works itself out after 20 minutes or so of warmup jogging and I can do my workout with no issues. Lately, with the cold weather and wind, even a 40-minute super-easy warmup jog isn’t cutting it. My hamstrings bitch at me as I attempt to launch into 800m intervals on the track: their combined age is 82 years old, they’ll have me know, and they demand more respect!

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Readers Roundtable: How Do You Fit in the Extras?
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resistance bands make strength training easyMake sure your glutes aren’t lazy!

Stretch after every run!

Don’t forget a high-protein snack is a must for proper recovery!

Over the weekend a bunch of us Saltines got together at our first ever Salty Camp! Woo! It was a super fun weekend of running, giggling, and teaching and learning. Poppy helped us understand anatomy and what little things we could do ourselves to keep our soft tissues healthy. Ginger explained how mindfulness could enhance our running and our lives. And Barley showed us how easy it can be to get in strength work anywhere.

I definitely learned a lot, but was wondering how easy it will be to squeeze these new things I learned into my normal life. Between running all the miles and, well, life, it’s hard to get in all the little extras.

How do you get it in? Do you activate your glutes at stop lights? Do you foam roll while watching the Daily Show? Do you stretch while the kids play on the playground?

The Scoop on Static Stretching
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She might want to do buttkicks instead...
She might want to do buttkicks instead.

Talk to any runner and they will likely have a strong opinion on most topics related to training, racing, and injury prevention.  The topic of static stretching is no exception: whether or not to stretch before a run or only after, how long you should do it, and lately, whether you should ever stretch at all.

However, it is important to keep in mind the recipe for staying healthy and performing well is as individual as the number of runners out there, and you need to pick and choose the ingredients that will work the best for you.  So here I present to you, our Salty Readers, some information on the now controversial practice of static stretching – and I hope it helps you decide whether or not it should be in the mix for you! Read more >>

Can Stretching Hurt Runners? Gretchen Reynolds Does the Research for You.
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'Stretch it out' photo (c) 2009, lululemon athletica - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/As I’ve said before, I’m a podcast junkie so of course I listen to Terry Gross’s amazing interview show, Fresh Air.  About a month ago, Terry interviewed sports journalist Gretchen Reynolds to promote Reynold’s new book, The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can: Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer.  I was really excited to hear an interview with a female runner whose job requires her to research sports science!  It hits a little close to home, if ya know what I mean!

So I’m strolling down 7th Avenue with my earbuds in, when suddenly I stop in my tracks and a guy who’s texting and not paying attention walks into me then gives me a dirty look like it’s my fault.  “Sorry,” I mutter, fumbling with my iPhone. “That can’t be right,” I think as I back up the podcast. “Did this woman just say that stretching is bad for me?” Read more >>