Running For Gym Rats: Adding Running To Your Workouts.
Running, when applied correctly, maybe exactly what you need in your fitness arsenal. Learn how and why running should be incorporated into your workouts.
Before you bring out the torches and pitchforks, hear me out. I know running may not be the forte of the majority of Muscle and Strength’s audience, but running, when applied correctly, maybe exactly what you need in your fitness arsenal.
Running promotes a healthy quality of life, increased GPP (General Physical Preparedness), along with unmatched improvements in the metabolic response, to name a few of its many benefits. Not only will this article help explain how and why running should be incorporated into the workout regimen of novice lifters to the most seasoned of gym vets, it will also give you every piece of information you need to start down the running trail.
Benefits of Running
As most of you readers already know, weight training is vital for the health of the human body. It aligns posture, increases metabolism, increases flexibility and fixes muscular imbalances (when done correctly). However, to increase the effects of weight training, some sort of cardiovascular activity is crucial. By adding cardiovascular activity, you can burn fat, increase natural hormonal release and lower your risk of heart disease.
But how does this help you achieve your weight training goals? By participating in cardiovascular exercise you are prolonging your body’s ability to train and therefore increasing growth potential. By increasing training ability, all that you’re essentially doing is allowing your body to train for longer periods of time. For example, instead of working out for 60 minutes, you are now giving your body the ability to train for 90 minutes, thus more potential for gains in size and strength.
In this section, so far, I’ve only referred to cardiovascular activity, and not particularly running, well this is why; simply all cardiovascular activity is done for the same reason and has the same potential. Cardiovascular activity is what the name implies, training of the heart and circulatory system.
Sports that fall into this category are swimming, cycling, boxing, as well as running. Swimming is great, but for the majority of people, they can’t find competitions to meet their competitive edge. Boxing is a personal favorite but causes muscular imbalances through force production and time under tension in the pushing phase with minimal tension in the retraction phase.
Boxing, like swimming, may be hard to compete in with minimal competitions combined with the high skill levels of those competing. These also require a pool or ring, respectively, which can be hard to come across, and memberships to these clubs/facilities can be costly. Cycling creates muscular imbalances through the repetitive circular motion in the plane of movement that the pedals rotate in. Cycling can be as costly, if not more so than swimming and boxing.
This leaves only running. Running is a great cardiovascular activity that can be done anywhere. Because it comes naturally to the physiological design of the human body, the learning curve is minimal and muscular imbalances (especially when paired with proper weight training) are unusual.
Competitive Running
Although most gym rats, myself included, enjoy seeing our bench press rise by a few pounds or striving to add a few inches to the arms, powerlifting and bodybuilding may not be for us (I have a feeling I’ve made quite a few enemies at this point in the article). For the majority of average lifters, powerlifting and bodybuilding may be too taxing on the body, as well on the wallet. However, running may just be what you need to fuel you’re competitive edge.
Another benefit of competitive running is its regularity, whereas powerlifting meets may be months apart and hours away from your home. In your town alone, you shouldn’t be surprised to find several races a year. This will not only give you a date to work for to achieve a goal, but will give you an annual way to mark your progress.