The Six Minute Mile Holiday Gift Guide
Don’t stress about shopping for your running-obsessed friends and family members—or yourself, wink wink!—we’ve got you covered with the gifts runners want and the gifts runners need.
Just in case you didn’t read every one of the newsletters we sent this month, we are once again bringing you the most-loved stories from the last four weeks. It’s our way of making sure that you don’t miss any of our best content. Friends don’t let friends miss important running advice. Cheers!
When it comes to training, being Goldilocks might be a bad thing – some efforts are too hard to be easy and too easy to be hard, leaving you in a purposeless middle ground. This “grey zone” is a common trap, but according to “The Grey Zone: Destroying the Myth of the Grey Day,” the real issue is training without a clear intention. The piece suggests adopting a three-part framework: Load Days to create a stimulus for adaptation, Recovery Days to absorb those gains, and Preparation Days to prime the system for hard work. From this perspective, the only truly “grey day” is one where you can’t define its purpose. While that provides a great weekly structure, other systems can help you dial in the intensity within those sessions. Our partners at McMillan Running offer advice in: “Zones & Workouts: A Runner’s Guide to Training Smarter,” which outlines a four-zone model. This system organizes workouts by their primary goal: Zone 1 for Endurance (which should be 60-80% of your weekly training), Zone 2 for Stamina, Zone 3 for Speed, and Zone 4 for Sprint power. By thinking about your training through one of these intentional frameworks, you can ensure every workout has a purpose, helping you get fitter without just spinning your wheels.
#GotAZoneToPick
Not even the best fortune tellers and palm readers can predict exactly how well you’ll age, but we found a batch of tests that are the next best thing: “How Healthy Are You Aging? Take These 4 Fitness Tests to Find Out.” Moves like the “timed up and go” or the “sitting-rising test” offer insight into your balance, mobility, and strength, with poor scores linked to an increased risk of early mortality. One study even found that the inability to stand on one leg for 10 seconds in your middle age could double your risk of death within a decade. If you’re struggling to stay upright, don’t panic – most experts agree balance is a skill you can sharpen at any age. In addition to balance and mobility tests, research has found grip strength to be a surprisingly accurate predictor of longevity: “Grip strength: The test for your chances of living to 100.” Grip strength is one of the best ways to check your functional strength, which is important for maintaining activity and independence as we age. Lose your grip, and daily tasks like groceries and cleaning fall out of reach. The good news is that you can also improve your grip and overall strength through consistent physical activity and resistance exercises. For those looking to get started, “21 Pull Up Variations: Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced Options” provides a list of progressions – including dead hangs, lat pulldowns, or negative pull-ups – that can help you work toward a full pull-up, building the upper body and grip strength needed to support a long and healthy life. Of course life insurance companies make money by predicting how long you will live, so their tests tend to be scary accurate. For a brief quiz to forecast your lifespan, check out the John Hancock Life Expectancy Calculator.
#GetAGrip
We like to think of our body’s agility like a savings account: you can’t make withdrawals forever without making a few deposits. As we age, we’re all at risk of losing our natural range of motion, which is why it’s crucial to invest in movements that build it back up. We found a guide for this in a new article from Outside RUN: “Feeling Old and Slow? Do These Moves to Stay Healthy, Mobile, and Fast While Aging.” The piece argues that just like strength, mobility must be earned through an active process of progressive movements. You can follow this principle by not forcing your way into the full expression of a move right away, and instead thinking about holding tension in the muscle at all times to build stability through a full range of motion. Exercises like Goblet Slant Board Squats are designed to do exactly that. While foundational moves are critical, it’s also easy to neglect the smaller, supporting muscles that keep your form dialed in. That’s where Canadian Running Magazine’s list of “4 exercises runners forget—but shouldn’t” comes in handy. It highlights simple but effective moves like Foot Doming to strengthen your arches for a more efficient step, and Farmer’s Carries to train the grip, core, and shoulders that support a steady arm swing late in a run. By combining these bigger movements with targeted accessory work, you can help build a more resilient system for the long haul.
#MobileHones
Recently, we wrote about the “grey zone” of running. If the name sounds uninviting to you, that’s by design: it’s where progress comes to a halt according to some coaches. Building on that idea, we came across another story that shares a similar warning: “Are marathon-paced runs effective for training?” Canadian Running Magazine says these efforts present a bit of a paradox. Marathon-paced runs offer little more physiological benefit for your aerobic system than easier runs, yet they are far more draining. They also aren’t fast enough to properly develop speed. Their primary value is psychological; running long at your goal pace can be a confidence booster, helping you become accustomed to the potential discomforts of your race-day effort. To avoid accidentally cruising in this grey zone, it helps to develop an intuition for speed. We found some advice in “How to Nail Your Running Paces Just by Feel” from The Planted Runner, which ties how a run should feel to its purpose. The guide suggests that a steady, marathon-pace effort should feel “comfortably hard,” where you can speak three or four sentences. A tempo run is a step up to “hard, but controlled,” limiting you to one or two sentences, while speed workouts should feel “very hard,” leaving only enough breath for a word or two. Learning to tune into these feelings can help ensure every run has a clear objective.
#Feelosophy
In a post from last month, we explained “Why Runners Need To Get Behind Glute Training.” The TLDR is that your glutes are comprised of three key muscles that work together to power your stride, stabilize your hips, and absorb impact. The main challenge is that many of us have trouble activating these muscles correctly, meaning our bodies often cheat by using stronger muscles like the quads. So, how do you make sure they’re actually firing up? Ashley Arnold has the answer in her brand new piece on our site: “The 6 Best Glute Exercises to Improve Your Running Form and Prevent Injury.” She demonstrates several key movements with accompanying videos, including Step-Ups to improve hill-climbing power, Bulgarian Split Squats to target your glutes while improving balance, and Clam Shells to support the glute medius and boost hip stability. Of course, knowing which exercises to do is only half the battle – you still have to find the motivation to do them. If you’re struggling to get off the couch for that extra credit work, Ashley also shares a few tricks in: “How I Motivate Myself When I Don’t Want to Run.” She suggests that something as simple as a 1-to-5-minute active warm-up can be enough to get your blood flowing and your feet moving. Or you could try her favorite hack of faking a smile which can actually reduce your body’s perception of discomfort. You may see some big returns in power and stability by adding just a few of these moves to your week.
#GluteFactory
According to @bpccoaching, one secret to a faster stride is high heel elevation while you run. He says the degree of knee flexion elite runners have sets them apart from amateurs, providing additional momentum for a quick turnover each step. So, how do we make this type of stride feel natural? Coach Dale’s solution is butt kicks, and you can watch the clip to see examples of the difference in strides to cue you in to a more efficient technique.
