People have this notion that running is majorly a lower body exercise. But the fact is that running involves each and every joint and muscle in the body working actively or passively to make you move forward.
Strength Training
In order to keep your body in good form and alignment, you need to invest some part of your training time to strength training exercises. Specifically targeting legs, glutes and core muscles; these exercises make these muscles stronger to handle the prolonged stress of running and to prevent injuries.
Here are some strength training exercises you can incorporate into your regimen:
Planks: Help strengthen your core, lower back and shoulders
Calf raise: Stand on your toes on the edge of a raised platform/ stair and raise your heels up and slowly go down.
One-legged Squat: This is good for single leg stability & strengthening of hamstrings, quads and glutes. Stand barefoot on one leg and try to sit and stand on one leg just like we do in normal bodyweight squat. Start with a small squat and gradually increase the range of knee flexion / sit deeper into it.
Forward Lunges: Take a step forward and bend the front knee so that your front thigh is parallel to the ground, pause for a second and come back, repeat with the other leg.
Squat to overhead Press: Grab a pair of dumbbells or two water bottles in your hands and keep them at shoulder level. Slowly sit into a deep squat and as you stand up push the weights up from the shoulder to overhead position extending your arms fully. Works on your legs / lower back and shoulder strength.
Dynamic Stretches for Warm-up
There is now a widely held consensus that static stretching where one holds the muscles for some time is not recommended before running. However, 10 to 15 minutes of dynamic stretching is helpful before a run. These include stretches like high knee marches, walking lunges, butt kicks, spine flexion / extension and rotations, hip circles, shoulder circles etc.
The idea is to get a feel of mobilization through the joints while moving through different planes of motion and raising the core temperature of the body.
