Strength Exercises Improve Your Running Economy
Not only does core work strengthen your body and prevent injuries, but it also helps improve your running economy (or in other words, your efficiency). Stronger muscles—particularly in the legs—help you run faster and use less energy at the same time. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
More: 5 Core Exercises That Increase Running Efficiency
Core workouts do this by allowing your body to use more muscle fibers during any given workout. Sometimes your body can't recruit as many muscle fibers as possible. Using the same muscles over and over again means you get tired more quickly.
But if you have a larger pool of muscle fibers to work with, you can delay fatigue and run faster.
At this point it's important to remember that your "core" is more than just your abdominal muscles. The core includes your hamstrings, quads, hips, glutes, hip flexors, obliques and lower back. Basically, the core includes every muscle between your knees and nipples.
More: 3 Kettlebell Exercises to Boost Running Performance
Core Workouts Can Help You Race Faster
So let's put these two powerful benefits of doing strength exercises together. What happens when you combine injury prevention with higher efficiency? You get a faster runner.
Injury prevention is the real key to getting faster because when you can string together weeks, months and even years of consistent training, then you'll see dramatic improvement in your race times.
Indeed, long-term success (in other words, improvement) in distance running is all about consistency.
More: How to Become a Consistent Runner and Nail New PRs
It's so important that I like to call it the "secret sauce" of good training—it helps your marathon pace this year become your easy pace next year. Consistency is what allows your 5K pace to soon become your 10K pace (or even your half-marathon pace) as your new 5K pace becomes faster.
Core workouts might be the missing link in your training that can help you become a more consistent, injury-proof, economical runner.
Take an extra 10 minutes every day and do a core workout that will help you achieve your running goals. There's no better investment in your training.
More: 8 Best Core Exercises for Endurance Athletes
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