Tag Archives: triathlon

Day 3: Top 5 gifts for Endurance Athletes

OK gang – let’s say that you are an athlete who has to stand on one leg at some point in your sport. This could be running straight ahead, cutting laterally on the soccer field, jumping up for a rebound during a game of pick up – literally any weight bearing sport! You need to learn how to properly USE your foot. So many running athletes don’t have proper coordination of muscles inside their foot. If you can’t move your foot, your foot position will fall apart when running, jumping, cutting, and anything else you do.

What’s the secret?

#1 – understand your foot. Years ago, I made this video for Running Times. The focus was on how to prepare your foot for minimal running shoes (because that was the trendy thing to talk about at the time) but let’s be 100% honest here – the criteria I point out are valid and critical for ANY running athlete. So take a look at it, and make sure you can separate out the “right way” to use your foot muscles. Yes, its hard for most of you, and yes it gets better really, really quickly if you invest a few minutes a day. If you want more, check out my interview with Ryan at MOVEMENT FIX where we talk in depth about how feet work, and how to make your work better!

#2 – buy a MOBO Board

This is a 2021 update. In the past I recommend a rocker board…..but those still let you cheat the way your foot works. I saw a problem in need of a fix, and developed, patented, and launched MOBO. Yes, I made the thing your body needs, yet you didn’t know exists. Want to become durable? Want to become BETTER? Want to improve your performance? Check out moboboard.com and see what you can do to improve your connection point to the ground – your feet!!!

Note – the rocking motion in MOBO is quite different than a “wobble” board. A rocker board pivots around 1 single axis and is great to “train” proper foot stability. A wobble board is essentially a ball on the bottom of the board and is completely unstable in all directions. Sure, a wobble board is more unstable, but its one situation where more instability isn’t better. And the cur out for your toes take the experience to another level entirely, and doesn’t allow you to “cheat” with the muscles in your calf and cues you to use the muscles IN your feet! Get a MOBO board, and have fun improving your balance!

Day #1: Top 5 Gifts for your Endurance Athlete

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Jinge bells are out, mistletoe is up, and you are freaking out because you missed out on useless sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday…..uh oh.

What do you do now? How about dig deep, and find a present for your fellow endurance athlete that’s actually worth its weight. This week, I’ll throw out my top 5 products to help you improve. And while I didn’t actually pay for any of them (they were all sent to me by the respective company to try out), the key is that I actually DO use them. I get a LOT of stuff sent to me to try out/ demo/provide feedback. Rather than posting the things that don’t help, I wanted to share the products I feel actually have a reason to earn a place in your home training gym.

The first product on the list today is one to help you to recover. That’s right – recovery!….. the “new” buzzword getting all the attention. I once heard someone say “there is no such thing as over-training, only under-recovery”……ummm ….sure……well…..from a physiological perspective, that’s about the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard. However, endurance training does lead mechanical breakdown and structural changes, and we could all use a few tools to help us along. If you want to learn more about what types of changes occur in your soft tissues during endurance training, I highly recommend you read up on it in my book Anatomy for Runners. I’m a firm believer that informed athletes make better decisions. Embracing the reason for change means you’ll embrace it as part of your overall strategy to improve.

So today we are featuring 2 products actually.

The stocking stuffer: LAX ball

LAXball What is small, spherical, costs under 3 bucks, and may be the single biggest ally to have in your corner? The simple LAX ball. Yes, I know the foam roller is the self-proclaimed king of soft tissue recovery tools, but you likely already have one of those under your bed, and barely use it. Time for something else to mix it up.

Where a foam roller can deform your body’s tissues in one plane, a LAX ball can dig deeper, and get better tissue deformation. In plain speak, the goal is to mobilize your body’s “layers” – and the LAX ball is a highly effective tool for doing so. A warning: even though its cheap, its ability to get a lot of pressure in a small spot also means it can inflict a lot of pain as it works its magic. Once your sweetie takes it our of their stocking, they can find about a million uses from the soles of their feet up to their lats. I’ve got a few suggestions in my book, and you can find a million more on youtube. Much cheaper than a trigger point ball, and if you lose it, no one is crying to invest in a new one.

The under-the-tree recovery tool: The Roll8

Roll8

So the LAX ball costs 3 bucks….why should you spend more? And why would you ever want to stick your leg in between its jaws? Well lets look at reality here. You (or your significant other/friend) decides to ride a little bit longer than normal. Push a bit harder up the hill. Play an extra pick up game after the first one. Knock out an extra 3 repeats on the track just because your training partner says he’s “in the zone” (while you are about to see your lunch once more)….. time after time, we over-reach our volume and intensity.

While your heart and endorphins are pumping at full capacity, the stress and strain on your body causes structural damage. And that damage needs help to heal optimally, so you can do it all over again.

So you decide to bite the bullet, and shed tears on the foam roller and LAX ball, calling them the devil. It hurts so bad, all you can do is lock your muscles into a spasm. Guess what kind of positive effect this is having on the recovery process? –> nothing.

The entire reason anyone would want to do soft tissue work is to move those layers of tissue around. The Roll8 allows you to RELAX so that you can actually mobilize tissue. Soft tissue work hurst sometimes, but but shouldn’t hurt all the time.

In summary, these are both 2 excellent products. I have both, and use them both quite often, but for different reasons. If you’ve got a “problem area” you are trying to work on, the LAX ball is unmatched in its ability to go deep. But again, its often a bit too much for most folks, and a bit too potent to use frequently for a lot of athletes. The Roll8 is a really cool product that provides just enough compression and tissue glide to use pretty much daily. You won’t associate it with pain but instead with relief and mobility – which means you’ll actually USE it. I’m often amazed at the before-and-after difference I feel after using it for just a few minutes. For these reasons, I strongly recommend both of these as essential pieces of recovery equipment for endurance athletes.

Happy shopping! more to come tomorrow

Coffee talk with Endurance Planet

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EndurancePlanet

If you are tired of listening to the same old tunes during your workout, check out this podcast I did with Endurance Planet. We get into some gritty content here. Basically, the idea that you don’t need “more”, you need “better”. And then you need more of the “better.”

Skill first, dosage second. If you are looking for ideas on where to start your transformation next season – start here.

Neuromuscular control: why is it important for runners, and 3 easy ways to improve it

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Efficient movement is one that allows you to activate your muscles as fast as possible. Why? Because running demands some pretty quick contact times (between .08 – .3 seconds every stride). If you can generate a forceful contraction rapidly during the stance phase, you’ll tap into some amazing efficiency. And tapping into those forceful contractions requires good “neuromuscular control”. This term gets throw around a LOT with abandon. A quick explanation here: Strength is nothing unless your body can control it. Our nervous system needs to “learn” to control our newfound strength and power. Said simply: better neuromuscular control, better economy.

To get more of your nervous system in the game, we need to recruit more muscle fibers to contract. And there are three ways that we can increase muscle fiber recruitment.

Sprint all the time. If you are in a drag race, you aren’t going to pull up in a Prius. You are going to borrow your neighbor’s Porsche. Who cares about economy, you want to win the checkered flag! Running as fast as you can isn’t really that efficient. It costs way more energy per distance than running slow. This increased energy cost comes from recruiting a LOT of muscle fibers at once. Sprinting is actually one of the best running- specific forms of strength training out there. Its not just for track-stars. I have my 800 meter, 5K, 10K, 13.1, 26.2 and even ultra runners doing sprints at various cycles during the year. But its hard, and that why we don’t do it every day!
Run Hills. No secret here. Running up hill requires we raise our body up against gravity more than running on flats. And the extra force per step it takes to conquer that hill comes from….you guessed it…..more muscles fibers being recruited each and every step. Hills are tried and true for years to improve running-specific strength. But again, these place a big training load on our body, and we can’t do them every day.
Lift weights. The cool thing about weights is that we can get a huge increase in the number of muscle fibers activated (there’s that catchy term again…..more neuromuscular recruitment!) without a big cardiovascular and connective tissue training stress. Lifting quite heavy and quite powerfully has been directly coorelated to running economy. And here again, you can’t do these daily either.

So the secret to improving your ability to activate more muscle fibers comes from, well, activating more muscle fibers. Take a look at your training plan and see how you can include 1 or 2 of these techniques into your own strategy each week. A little goes a long way here. Have fun, and watch as you achieve those running milestones.

hard work + brains = race day success

Help for New Runners: a conversation with Healthynomics

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So, you read the “4 exercises every runner should do this month!” in Runner’s World. You even like the 6-pack abs you see on the cover. You wonder how many miles you have to run before yours pop out like that too?

Your best friend challenged you to sign up for a 10K in a few months. And your trip to the running store left you so confused on what to buy that you are thinking about just wearing the beater shoes you use to cut grass.

and we haven’t even started a conversation about chocolate milk being the best recovery drink or not…….there’s a ton of info out there. Over the course of my career, I’ve worked with many thousands of runners. If you ever wondered what kind of simple advice goes a long way to set you on the right course for a smooth start and long term success, you just might want to check this out. Healthynomics asked some questions – and you’ll get some answers. Take a listen here:

Getting Started With Running: Choosing shoes, prepping the body, and more!

a new way to train for running. Lava magazine and Linsey Corbin lead the way

Webinar of the month: Running Footwear

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USA Triathlon selected my webinar “Running Footwear: A critical look at what we know about footwear, and how to select the right shoes for your athlete.” as the February spotlight. This presentation is loaded with objective information and references to understand what shoes do (and don’t do) and help you see past the marketing hype to select the right tool for your runs.

Smarter runners make smarter decisions on footwear!

Anatomy for Runners: Top 9 Thought Provoking Books of 2013

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Its always nice to get a shout out. Steve Magness is one of the “better thinkers” in the world of running, coaching, and athlete performance, and I respect his opinion highly. Apparently, Steve is nice enough to respect mine as well, and named Anatomy for Runners as one if his “Top 9 Though Provoking Books of 2013” – thanks Steve. If you live under a rock, and haven’t come across his amazing blog, I highly recommend checking it out: the Science of Running.

And while I’m at it, I’d like to say thanks to all of you who have purchased the book. I teach all over the country, and the number of clinicians and coaches who already have the book, and actually USE it daily on their teams and patients is, well, quite humbling. I know the little niche I operate in will never reach the status of the Harry Potter, but there are over 11,000 of you around the world reading this book over the past year. I hope its making you rethink the way you approach your training, and your patients, your teams, and ultimately producing better results. If you’d like to pick up a copy, click on the link on the right side of the page!

The work of a decade of my career, bound into the “take home version” for you.

Brain Camps and Tri-camp: education for you and yours this new year

Jay Dicharry's Website, An Athlete's Body

Jay Dicharry, physical therapist and biomechanist

Tag Archives: triathlon

Day 3: Top 5 gifts for Endurance Athletes

Day #1: Top 5 Gifts for your Endurance Athlete

Coffee talk with Endurance Planet

Neuromuscular control: why is it important for runners, and 3 easy ways to improve it

hard work + brains = race day success

Help for New Runners: a conversation with Healthynomics

a new way to train for running. Lava magazine and Linsey Corbin lead the way

Webinar of the month: Running Footwear

Anatomy for Runners: Top 9 Thought Provoking Books of 2013

Brain Camps and Tri-camp: education for you and yours this new year