4-step plan helps you run strong without increasing your injury risk. You made the commitment to improve your fitness level. To guard against an endurance athlete's enthusiastic nature, provided are the following strategies to prevent against over-training.
1. Mileage
Every athlete at one time or another has been told this classic piece of training advice, "listen to your body". Typically an athlete's training volume will involve a gradual increase in weekly mileage. And every fourth your training volume will be decreased by up to 50 percent.
2. Rest Days
Proper recovery is perhaps the most critical component of a training program. It's ideal to incorporate recovery days even for the most demanding of training plans. Even the best athletes in the world take days off. World record holder Paula Radcliffe takes one day off every ten days. This is incredible when you consider the daily sports therapy not to mention she sleeps 10+ hours per night, including an afternoon nap.
3. Be Patient With Pace
Athletes are goal oriented, constantly setting goals and continuously raising the bar. It is not uncommon for athletes to become fixated on running a certain pace in training. Before long the athlete is forcing the pace, maintaining an unnatural rhythm. Do not become reliant on running gadgets (i.e. speed distance monitors and heart rate monitors). Learn to run natural and relaxed, not allowing gadgets to dictate your pace. Use these gadgets as a aid, not a life line.
4. Better Safe Than Sorry
Excessive fatigue, prolonged muscle soreness and the onset of a cold or flu are all tell tale signs that your body is in need of a much needed day off. Unfortunately most athletes will continue to train until they are sidelined by illness or injury. Here are simple guidelines that will keep you up right and running! If you feel the onset of a cold or flu, be proactive by taking at least one day off from physical activity. Do not resume training until you feel 100%. Excessive fatigue can be precipitated by a number of factors in particular life stresses and overtraining. Muscle soreness is sometimes unavoidable, especially in highly motivated exercisers that are pushing the envelope. If fatigue and/or muscle soreness remain for more than three days, take at least 1 day off running. By adopting these preventive strategies you will be running stronger and injury free.
Training for running follows the same principles as any other sport -- the training part stresses a particular physiological system, while the rest part afterwards allows your body to re-build itself stronger than before. Any successful training program will focus on teaching you how to run longer, faster, stronger, and more efficiently, and will also build in sigificant rest periods for you to recover and get stronger.
This first section goes through some of the basics. The second section builds on the first, and provides specific training programs to fit your individual goals.