Guest Post: Mel Cook from Run With Life - Tips for Runners

I am lucky enough to have my sister and trainer, Mel do a guest post for me.

Mel Cook is the founder and director of Run With Life (visit her website here). She has a passion for running and to keep the body and mind healthy. Her motto is: 'When you invest in your health, life is easy!'

Mel is also on the cover of the Maroondah Leader newspaper this week and in the report on page 9, she talks about how the running crew she runs has helped some of it's members cope with forms of depression - and I'm one of the members who has benefitted from it! You can view the paper and read the article here.

Without further adieu, here's Mel's post!

Have you been watching the Olympics over the last couple of weeks? Have you seen the marathon runners, the 100m sprinters and the 400m runners? All of them have the build and genetics for running. Along with training and nutrition, they have the genes to be professional runners.

The first thing I often hear when people want to get fit or lose weight is that they think they need to run. Running is definitely an amazing way to get in shape, tone up, improve mood, decrease low feelings, socialise etc, however, it is also very high impact and can cause injuries without the correct technique. The majority of the general population who first get ‘into’ running  are not genetically built to be professional runners, they don’t have the muscle strength to run correctly, may be carrying too much weight or haven’t run since they were a child so their body has forgotten what the natural movement pattern is for running. We sit all day in chairs, cars, have poor posture and poor core stability and our muscles have forgotten how to switch on and get to work.

So what happens when we start running for the first time? We use muscles we haven’t used in long time, which are often not strong enough. In turn we use muscles which shouldn’t be relied on for running, and often run too hard too soon. We then pull up very sore and possibly incur an injury and lose all motivation. 

This is why I have studied running technique and encourage all my runners to work on runing with good form first and foremost, before pushing themselves harder. You should always focus on and go back to your technique.

My Tips for Running

- Running is not easy, find a running buddy or join a running group to stay motivated.

- Learn how to run properly again. Invest in your knowledge and empower yourself to run well, rather than risking your wellbeing and fitness by pounding the pavement incorrectly

- Learn how to fuel the body for a run so each time you go to train you can go harder, further, burn more calories and get a better result. Don’t deplete all of your nutritional stores.

- Make sure you strength train. Running wastes away muscle and unless we strength train, we will lose more muscle (we already lose muscle mass every year once we hit our thirties- not good for the metabolism), depleting our immune system, lowering our metabolism and stressing our body even more.

- Stretch, do release work with a foam roller, massage ball, massage etc.

LEARN,  REFUEL,  RECOVER,  RUN,  FUN .....CHOOSE TO RUN WITH LIFE

Mel Cook