Muscles – Run M5

Run M5 Muscles — Core strength is essential to running faster…

Muscles are often confusing in their role in running performance. Sure, they play a role, but if muscles were really that important, wouldn’t bigger muscles equal faster times? And wouldn’t this mean bodybuilders would be winning road races? So, it’s not the amount (or size) of muscles that matters – it’s the type of muscles and the balance of muscles in the body that truly impact running performance.

Most of you have probably heard of fast vs. slow twitch muscles. Fast twitch muscles are fast and explosive and slow twitch muscles are for endurance and long distance. And this is true – to a point. Slow twitch muscles are extremely important for distance running but an endurance athlete with more fast twitch muscle fibers who trains properly will win every time over a comparable athlete with more slow twitch muscle fibers. It won’t even be close. The fast twitch runner with endurance is MUCH better than the slow twitch runner who tries to add in speed after the fact.

The reason this is important is that we lose our fast twitch speed as we get older. We do lots of LSD’s (Long Slow Distance) and that’s what we become – long slow distance runners. But wouldn’t you rather be a long fast distance runner? There are way too many people plodding along instead of RUNNING.

Run M5 trains the muscles in two ways. The first is to become more stable. When you do this, you are able to have a higher quality of training, to maximally adopt these fast twitch characteristics. When this is done, the sky is the limit. You’ll have newfound speed that you haven’t felt since you were a kid. And no amount of LSD training will ever give you the benefits that adding some raw fast muscle speed will.

Next, running fast often centers around core conditioning. The fastest runners, and the least injury-prone ones, have the strongest cores. Their bodies are able to absorb the impact and the wear and tear of running mileage without breaking down.

Think about a tree – is the tree any good if it has strong limbs but doesn’t have a strong trunk? This tree will surely wither and breakdown because it’s unstable. Imbalanced. The human body is no different. It will break down if the trunk is not strong.

Also, note that the “core” is not just about the six-pack that most people refer to when talking about core. It’s about the internal and external obliques, transverse abdominis, erector spinae, glutes and yes, the six pack (rectus abdominis). Each of these muscles plays a role in your running stride and having the optimal balance of muscle strength and balance between them will ensure you perform your best.

[membership_headline]Run M5 Muscle Drills[/membership_headline]

[text_bar_3 background=”#F0F0F0″ + width=”100%”]Bowlers[/text_bar_3]

[new_video_with_placeholder video_url=”http://d1zjb6xntv5zsb.cloudfront.net/RunM5/Muscle Videos/Bowlers.mp4″ + width=”710″ + height=”402″ + video_id=”video1″ + video_image=”http://runm5.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Muscle-Video-Placeholder.png” + autoplay=”true”] [/new_video_with_placeholder]