Clinical Director and Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist at Central Health, Kevin Huffington’s has completed week one of his training to achieve his exercise goals for 2022! Read Kevin’s update below.
I’ve completed the first week of an 8-week block of training that’s geared towards achieving my exercise goals in 2022.
It was a good week, I hit my targets and importantly remained injury free with no niggles.
Training consisted of running 5 out of 7 days, with 3 lots of easy running, from 6 to 10 miles in distance, 1 speed/interval session and 1 tempo run. The week also included 2 strength & conditioning (S&C) sessions, so I trained twice on 2 of the days.
I apply the 80/20 rule to my running, based on lots of research with 80% easy running helping develop your red blood cell count, increase oxygen uptake and help increase your VO2 max. The 20% harder running helps your body get used to race speed, improves your running form and tests recovery.
As a runner and Clinical Specialist Physio I have a particularly good insight into injury prevention management with regards to exercise.
I recommend, whether you’re starting on a block of training from a reasonable running base, like myself, or your new to running or exercise then you only want to increase your weekly mileage by approximately 10% per week, rather than aiming for large jumps in activity. The 10% rule allows your body to get used to your mileage and goes some way in preventing injury.
For all exercisers and especially for us older runners, a good ‘dynamic warm up’ is incredibly important to loosen and prepare our muscles and systems for the exercise to come, when you are doing the harder 20% sessions. I will typically do around a 10 to 15min warm up session.
Do the harder session and then warm down the same way as you warmed up using the same pace, followed by a good 10minutes of stretching. As I have got older, I have paid much more attention to my static stretching post activity.
For my easy sessions, I will do a 5 minute dynamic warm up, my easy run and then my static stretches for a good 10minutes.
I am always weary of any possible niggles that can progress into bigger issues, so the management of anything like that needs close attention. I will post more information on the very early way to manage such hints of a niggle etc in further posts.
Please drop me a line If you have any questions about your training or injuries.
