We know the core (hips, transverse abdominis, lower back) are important for preventing running injuries, but without exercises to strengthen your hips, glutes and hamstrings, your body will break down.

We must learn how to engage our glutes when running to run faster and more efficiently.

It’s true that some of the power in the running stride comes from your quads and calves, but the reality is that the quads and calves play only a minor role in your ability to generate a powerful stride compared to the hips, hamstrings and glutes.

How strong are your hips, glutes, and hamstrings? Don’t ignore the power these parts of our legs have an our ability to run faster and stronger!

Day 6 exercises: 2 sets of 10

****Click here for how to videos****

• One Legged Bridge
• Side Lunges
• Side Lying Leg Raises
• Plank – Your Choice (:30 2X)

Familiar with theses exercises and feeling good after 2 sets? Throw in one more round to feel the burn and make it count!

Bonus: #BalanceAndReach – Balance and Reach is an exercise brought to us a few months ago by our very ow Jennifer Moro-Ortiz. It’s a great exercise for hip stability and strength. If you’re doing it right…you’ll also feel it in your butt too. Use those glutes and hips to keep yourself balanced and to move your legs back and forth smoothly. Click here to watch the video and see how it’s done. Work through 2 sets of 10 on each side.

Speed Work: Seeing so many of us racing 5Ks yesterday, I thought it would be a cool idea to find out where your 5K pace stands so you have a way to gage your pace for other speed work. If you raced a 5K or any distance yesterday or this past weekend…you’ve already done your speed work for the week….don’t add another “effort workout”.

If you didn’t race this weekend, perform your own 5K! Remember that the warm up is an essential part of doing your best 5K. Run at least a mile at a slow conversation pace. Jessica and I ran a 12 min mile to warm up before our 5K yesterday. Then we were able to pull out 3 9 min miles during the race. Without that warm up, we would’ve been dead on the course after mile 1.

It’s also important to run a short cool down afterwards. So when you’re done, slow it down and run another 1/2 to full mile at your conversation pace. All in all you should have 4-5 miles with this workout. Let us know how you did and write down your pace for future reference when we talk about speed work drills. This information will help you determine how fast your interval sprints should be. More to come on that later…

Ready for a great Tuesday? Remember….we need strong, stable muscles in every part of our legs to get the speed and stability we want during our key races. Skipping leg day because you feel that you get enough strength from just running is a bad idea….

Get to work and fire up those legs Crew! 🙂