I am going to include some flat land training, starting after the next race, maybe once a week for a while, then once every two weeks, and starting from this winter, 3 three times a week. There is a marathon in the mountains here, that has around 300m of elevation gain and 900ms of loss. It is a difficult one, the level is not that high, so I think I have a shot at the first 10 places and also to have a personal best. I am very efficient in case of my foot strike when running downhill and you know, I also have now 20 years of running experience with nearly 40 years of sports. Including studying, testing, practising and coaching. Then of course there is also the self education through books, articles, videos and loads of podcasts.
Devon Larratt. That is our next episode. Of course when you stumble upon arm wrestling through social media, you will see him. Face of the sport. A great actor, bubbling personality, but not a media person always looking for attention. He is also a man of numbers invested. Training hours, weights lifted and over 30 years in the sports.
Of course whet we will talk about here is his training method. Actually I already heard very similar ideas and executions from Ben Greenfield Podcast, from the Low Back Disorders book or even from Kelly Starett.
Running is a lot of tendon. Blood flow to the tendons on the other hand is very limited. When running there is also a limited range of motion that is constantly imprinted nueormuscularly. Muscle memory, brain, and brain muscle connection. This is why when you do two weeks of recovery or 4 weeks of recovery, often it is more beneficial to either do something else than running, or still include a lot of fast strides and speedier longer intervals. If not, 3 to 4 weeks of jogging at like 6:30/km pace while your racing speed is at 3:30/km or under, might ruin especially the first 2 to 3 months of preparation. Your brain will remember, this is our range of motion, this is the power we put on the joints, including that cartilage, tendon, synovial fluid, tendons, muscles, golgi organs and so.
Anyways, what we talk about is blood flow. Full range of motion. Activation. Healing. Recovery and rehabilitation. I talked about Devon as that is what he is doing. We don't have to bring it to an extreme level, but we can be still way more extreme, than all the cases that I can line up. And 1.000.000 more extreme of cases where I can see 1 visit a month to kine or osteopath, to cure or constantly manage an issue.
It is simply high, see ultra high rep, low to high range of motion exercises, with just enough resistance to stimulate. Elastic bands are perfect. If you had some cable machines that is even better.
Look at calf raises. You can sit down and do ankle flexion or extension. Ankle circles one or the other way. You can do those with bent or extended knees. How much ? 7 x 100 for instance. We talk about the centimeter thick elastic band. Nearly the smallest and weakest one. You can do that for your hips, knees and even lower back, upper back, neck and shoulders. You can chose all sorts of anker points. You can choose range of motion. Lower part or upper part of the movement.
It is also great bio feedback. It gives you ideas about restrictions in range of movement. You might find knots. You can actually push on the muscle junkyards, these trigger points with a foam roller or a lacross ball and do those reps. You can do woodoo flossing reps too. You very modestly under do the tension, still gotto be tight as, but instead of going the max 2 minutes, you can go 4 x 100 reps in one go, but in multiple angles.
You can do positive stretches. Simply meaning, that instead of focusing on the stretched muscle, you push with the antagonistic one. You want to stretch quads and hip flexors, you don't just loosen everything and pull back with the arms. You actively pull with hams and glutes. This way you cannot injure the frontal muscles whil going the 50 to 100 reps at a time.
There can also be micro muscular movements. Clamshells, hip raises, half squats, jefferson curls, walking deadlifts, balance drills. The thing is, that often bodyweight is too much. You don't want to get sore, you don't want to be tired, you don't want to feel any strain. Just go through the motion. Activate those tendons.
Application
So I always used to integrate some of these routines. I train every day, arms, legs, low back. But not like a lot of reps constantly. I might do like 1 or 2 sets high rep, but other movements, keep it in the low 5 to 30 range. Now I will include a bunch of high rep sets with elastic bands and loads of ballistic training and swings. I will probably do one but max two sessions a week on one single movements, to not to over work any joints or any tendon.
The idea is to be so strong in 14 months time, that I can easily tackle this downhill marathon on the road, while still handling my trail races well.
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