BIG congratulations to everyone who completed the London Marathon yesterday. Personally, long distance running is not my thing, but i can fully appreciate the amount of time and effort put in as i've trained a lot of runners competing, so well done!
2 tips that I want to give anyone who is thinking of doing it are - Do your training, when possible, on the road. Unless it's dangerous, bad weather, a new place where you don't know the route, try your best to avoid the Dreadmill. And the reason's.....
Have you ever run on a Dreadmill, stepped off, everything started spinning and it felt like the ground was still moving under you. That's becasue according to one side of your brain it was! Running on the Dreadmill use's a section of your brain called your Cerebellum, whilst running on the road use's a completely different section called your Vestibular system. This is because running on a Dreadmill is an Open Chain movement (which is where you can overcome the resistance of something). In the case of the Dreadmill, the ground is moving underneath you, whereas on a solid surface, you push of the ground.
This is a huge thing for your central nervous system and will change muscle recruitment patterns and your gait cycle, which can ultimately lead to injury when you train on the road.
One thing is see time and time again on Dreadmill runners, is that because the ground is moving underneath them they don't need to push off it ... Hence their hip's don't get into full extension ... which means their not getting contraction/supination of their glutes ... which means that other muscles/ligaments (IT-Band!?) will have to help supinate the foot and pick up the slack of the glutes ... which can lead to injuries and bio-mechanical issue's.
I've just spent another amazing weekend on Anatomy in Motion http://www.anatomyinmotion.co.uk/ in which we analyised gait cycle's, foot scan's and Dreadmill running, so i'm fortunate to have a lot of knowledge in this area. I'll be writing up about some of the things we found last weekend at AiM so stay tuned for that but for now, please take in what i have written.
Most people don't spend enough time outdoors and given that running on solid ground/road it much better for your body than the Dreadmill, here's another reason to get outside and exercise.
"I'll be back" .... soon! X
Interesting. I run regularly outdoors here in Canada but during the winter I have to stop as the temperatures get so cold that, even if you don't injure yourself on the ice, your lungs suffer from inhaling freezing air. Many people get around this by getting a treadmill. This kind of makes me think twice...
ReplyDeleteMarathon Training Schedule I would like to say that this blog really convinced me to do it! Thanks, very good post.
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