4 Healthy Running Habits to Keep You Moving
As temperatures drop, it can be tough to keep up the motivation to lace up those shoes and hit the trail. Everything from inclement weather to limited daylight to the increase in gear you need to wear makes running tough in winter.
But there are a few ways you can stick with your running habits to accomplish your goals and gear up for an upcoming run. Consider these four healthy running habits that will keep you running all the way to warmer weather.
Run in the morning - and prepare the night before.
It’s easy for a busy day to keep you on the couch in the evenings. OBut the best way to ensure you hit your miles is to start your day with running. It doesn’t disrupt your sleep like evening running can, and helps you start your day with extra energy from the endorphins.
To make it easier, lay out everything the night before – shoes, clothes, snack, etc. You can even program your coffee maker to start brewing right when you make up. Since it requires resetting your body clock, morning running may require a little longer than most—at least three or four weeks—to sink in. When you build a habit around morning runs, it will eventually become part of your routine.
2. Commit to strength training and cross training
Building muscle improves your health, reduces injury risk, and, according to a review in the journal Sports Medicine, improves your running performance. By mixing up your workouts with weights and cross-training, you may find it more exciting when you get to hit the trail. Plus, across 26 studies of endurance athletes, strength-training programs (either plyometrics or heavy weights) boosted fitness, increased efficiency, and reduced runners’ times in 3K and 5K races.
Once you have a steady running habit, workouts like swimming, cycling, or rowing can boost your fitness without the impact stress of running.
Sticking to a regular class at the gym is an easy way to automate cross-training. Or, pair up with a friend for a weekly meetup to try some new exercises. You can challenge each other and hold each other accountable.
3. Warmup and Cooldown
Don’t let an injury keep you from running. By building a warmup and cool down into your routine, you’ll decrease risk of injury, and make it easier to ease into that morning run.
The repetitive motion of running tightens muscles, increasing your injury risk. Dynamic stretches before a run prep your body for more intense activities. And afterward, static stretching can return your muscles to their prerun length, even if you don’t actually gain flexibility. And foam rolling—either immediately postrun or later in the day—loosens tissue in ways that stretching alone can’t.
4. Cook at home - and eat more vegetables
Sticking with a healthy diet is much harder when you’re stopping at restaurants for every meal. Getting enough vegetables can sometimes be a challenge, and veggies should be a staple in every runner’s diet. Their high-quality carbohydrates power your workouts, and their antioxidants help you recover.
Instead, challenge yourself to improve your cooking skills and add a few more vegetables to your rotation. Don’t force yourself to eat kale if you hate it – pick vegetables you love, and find a recipe that looks promising. It’s worth putting a little extra time and effort in if you end up with vegetables you can’t get enough of.
Need more advice to improve your running performance? Schedule a consultation today.