Photo: Topspeedrunning.com
When the weather gives you a break from snow, ice, sleet and whatever other machinations Old Man Winter likes to send from the sky, there are few things more invigorating than getting out for a trail run. But while the run itself benefits your cardiovascular health and overall wellbeing, what if you could easily upgrade it into a session that also boosts strength, power, and anaerobic capacity? Good news. You can! Here are a few ways to get started:
Photo: Shapefit.com
Use Your Environment
If you run through trees, there will likely be a few that have been cut down or snapped by winter storms. While we’re not suggesting you emulate The Mountain from Game of Thrones and start tipping 600-pound logs ala World’s Strongest Man, you could do the lite version. Find a log you think you can lift, squat down and brace your abs. Get both hands on the trunk and push your feet hard into the ground to power the load upward. Once it’s at chest height, walk slowly forward with small steps as you move your hands up the trunk. Once it’s almost vertical, push it forcefully away from you and it should topple over. One tip: do the log tip on level ground or downhill. Performing it on an upward slope isn’t going to end well! No logs? No worries. Try lifting and throwing a few rocks, or carrying one for a minute or two. If all you can find are lighter stones, try some target practice with an object a reasonable distance away, or just aiming for distance with your throws.
Use Man-Made Features
If you live in a city, you might not have the opportunity to go all caveman-like the above tip. Instead, you could use some man-made stuff to update your run. If there’s a park nearby and you’re not concerned about kids and their parents giving you weird looks, try doing some pullups on playground equipment, or re-embracing your inner kid on the monkey bars. You can also do some inverted rows, L-sits (hang from rings or a bar, pull your legs up to waist height and hold) and jumps. Even a park bench can prove handy to add in some decline pushups. Flights of steps provide the chance to do some one and two footed hops and bounds, or to recreate those awful college or high school pre-season stair runs your sadistic coach made you do (“Pick those feet up!”).
Photo: Dailyburn.com
Use Your Body
If your running routes are pretty featureless, no worries. You can still dial up your intensity with some body weight exercises. Every five minutes, stop running and do a minute or 90 seconds off a bodyweight move. Jumping jacks, high knees, burpees, plyo pushups (pushing yourself explosively off the ground and clapping your hands before coming back down) and small hops as if you were jumping rope are all good choices. You could also try a few reps of the broad jump and vertical, which are great tests of lower body power. Just be sure to rest a few seconds between reps of these as such all-out efforts take longer to recover from.
