Get Fit: Stretching to Prevent Injury

There are officially two and a half weeks left until the Jaunt. I hope the routes last week inspired your training and gave you some new routes. You should be getting to the point in your training where you are tweaking things rather than pushing yourself to the next distance. Your workouts should be mimicking your event goal in pace and in distance. For example, this week you could try a few timed miles at your goal pace. Or you could run your goal distance and pick up the pace for two to four minute intervals along the way. Then back off on the pace and rest for half the time of your interval or until you feel ready to pick it up again. As we approach our last week you can look forward to cutting back your distance a bit to ensure you are fresh for the Jaunt. The attorney for injury cases in McAllen can help with the legalities of injury cases. One can also go on www.leddylaw.com/ to hire a lawyer.

If you browse around this website, you will know that as you increase your training intensity, you are more likely to have sore muscles. Stretching is one way to prevent injury and to ease the pain. I was hoping to find a video or some nice color pictures to give you a simple, short routine to do after you workouts. However, I could not find what I was looking for in current media. So here is the stretching routine I received as an athlete at the University of Nebraska.

This routine was developed by Dr. Coffin of Sioux City, South Dakota. He is a podiatrist that currently travels to the Hreska clinic in Lincoln. This man saved my running career with a pair of orthotics. During my appointment, he actually sat me down on the floor and had me go through this stretching routine. For general road event training, I do a half-mile running warm up, my workout and a half-mile cool down. Unless I have a tweak in my get-along, I only use this stretching routine after my workouts. I know stretching makes a difference because if I skip this routine for the sake of time, my body aches remind me of my neglect later in the day (or worse-during the night). So the time you invest in stretching is worth the investment. Until next week, happy stretching.

Coach Ohrt