Winter Running Tips From Ben Drenovac
As we approach winter, it’s time to start building towards many fun runs!
With upcoming events in the Athletics Victoria XCR season, Great Ocean Road Running Festival, Run Melbourne festival, Gold Coast marathon Festival, Melbourne marathon Festival there are plenty of opportunities coming up this winter.
Physiotherapist Ben Drenovac provides his top 5 running tips to help people get to the start line fit and healthy!
- Polarise your training! Most runners tend to spend too much time in the grey where they aren’t training hard enough to gain the benefits or easy enough to recover. Aim to spend 80% of your training at a pace you can comfortably talk and 20% working harder towards race paced goals!
- Keep your shoes maintained! Shoes generally last between 600kms-800kms. It is important that we rotate them before our body tells us we need too. A handy way to get more out of your shoes is to ensure we rotate through a variety of shoes in training to help us reduce our risk of injury.
- Progressive overload and down weeks! As a rough guide aim to add around 10% in volume per week to give your body a chance to adapt to training. After every 4 weeks it is a good idea to have a deload week to recovery before the next training block!
- Regular strength training! Many runners worry that resistance training may slow them down. However, strength running is a great method to reduce injury risk and improve your running economy.
- Recover! Your body only improves while you’re recovering. Ensuring you eat, drink and sleep appropriately will give your body to recover to your training demands.
For a more in-depth discussion of how you can improve your performance or reduce your injury risk it is recommended you discuss with a Physiotherapist.