January

Get a health check-up

As with anything, the number-one priority with any exercise programme is having the confidence in your own health to push yourself to new, unknown limits. Start 2017 with a full health screen and you can be sure that your body will keep up with your ambition for the year to come. Unfortunately, the incidence of cardiac events or healthrelated problems is on the rise in mass-participation events, simply because people are not taking the time to first get a full health screen. Companies such as Dublin Health Screening are now offering full packages for this very purpose. Tests should include blood pressure and BMI and ideally a stress test which will measure the electrical activity of your heart during incremental exercise in order to check for any abnormal responses. As always, use common sense in everything you do, if your diet or exercise history has not been great, take extra care when starting any new programme and make sure to get your doctor’s clearance first. For older adults, think about getting health checks every year to make sure your body is keeping up with your younger mind; you can never be too careful

February

Personalise your training with Heart Rate Variability training

The truth is, we all recover very differently from training. One athlete might find a particular workout quite easy and be recovered from the session two days later, whereas another might have a lot going on at work, or may have overdone it the week before, and will still be feeling the effects up to 3-4 days later. HRV is a method of measuring differences in heart beat rhythm that is associated with overtraining or fatigue in the nervous system. Systems such as Ithlete are affordable and work with your smartphone, providing daily ‘ready to train’ feedback via a heart-rate monitor. The concept is very simple; if you are recovered, a green light will show, and if you are still fatigued, a red/orange light will show. A tracker also measures your progress each day, so you can get a much better idea of how and when you recover during your typical training routine. Not one to miss

March

Add foam rolling to your recovery plan

Foam rolling as a tool to relieve muscle tension can be a fantastic way to stave off those tight legs from a hard training week. Remember that for most of us, a training session is usually followed by a long period in a stationary position, such as sitting in a car or at a desk. This will almost certainly cause some amount of tightness in the overworked muscles, and stretching is really not an efficient way to manage muscle tightness. Using a foam roller by applying pressure to the muscle will cause the neuromuscular system to actively relax the tense area and allow a muscle to regain its normal length and function. If you leave a muscle tight during subsequent workouts, you risk the chance of some kind of muscle damage, or a pulling action that will change the natural movement of certain joints in the body. Apply foam rolling by lying on the cylindrical shaped tool and literally rolling along the muscle length whilst applying some degree of pressure. Repeat this at least ten times. You can also pause at the areas that are specifically tight, or over ‘trigger points’ that you will feel as extra-painful areas of the muscle that have become aggravated with use.

April

Short on time?

Use High Intensity Interval Training to supercharge your session. Those of us unfortunate enough to have full-time work getting in the way of our training plans will often use the ‘lack of time’ excuse for skipping important sessions. However, it may be possible to get as much benefit from as little as 5-10 minutes of training as from a longer workout. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a method of running maximal efforts for very short duration’s, with a short rest period. While HIIT definitions vary, repeats are generally 10 to 60 seconds long, run nearly flat out, and are followed by a rest period lasting one to four times the length of the effort (so you’re recovered to do the next repeat at the same speed and with good form). Researchers have found that the low volume, high intensity approach of HIIT training can boost speed and fitness as well as conventional training methods. Definitely one to use on those busy winter evenings.

May

Add beetroots or beetroot juice to your daily meal plan

A sure way of improving your general performance, and also incredibly good for your health! Drinking beetroot juice has been found to lower blood pressure in unhealthy populations, as beets are a huge source of inorganic nitrate, which eventually ends up being converted to nitric oxide, a vasodilator. This is perhaps the most popular endurance enhancing nutrition supplement of the year, as nitric oxide opens up the blood vessels and increases blood flow, muscle contraction, and possibly neuromuscular function. Research has shown big improvements in running economy and performance with the use of beetroot juice; the dose is usually about 600ml of juice, or 1 to 2 ‘Beet It’ sports shots, available in your local health store.

June

Tired?

Substitute one of your runs with a pool recovery session Knowing when or why to take a day off from the pounding is essential to any long-term or progressive training programme. A lot of athletes become very worried about missing days of training, even when their energy levels are low and legs are a little ragged. A gem of advice in order to avoid the guilt of not training is to simply switch your normal run with a session in the pool. Pool recovery can really be anything that keeps you moving around in the pool as much as possible for a reasonable amount of time. My personal preference is to do a ‘drills and skills’ session in the pool in which we jog, hop and skip up and down the 25m length, and include the normal running drills you might see trackside, all performed underwater. Moving around underwater is fantastic for recovery, and if you maintain normal movement patterns as you would when out running, you will also be firing the same muscles and allowing some gentle work to be done. Try to spend at least half an hour in the pool, and include some simple underwater running to make up the extra time.

By Joe Warne