The Best Workout for Runners

If you’re serious about improving your running and lessening the associated aches and pains, you need to do more than just run. There are certain things that runners especially need to focus on to counteract the repetitive movements and correct the imbalances that running creates. The best workout for runners is going to include strength training two to three times a week. The workout should include mobility work, core activation, dynamic stretches, static stretches, and foam rolling. 

If you hate lifting weights or the idea of doing all those steps, there is another option: Pilates. 

The Best Workout for Runners Just Might Be Pilates

I love a great weight-lifting workout, but if you disagree, you can get great results by adding regular Pilates to your training schedule. Pilates is an all-in-one package that strengthens your body and builds muscle, mobilizes and stabilizes the joints from your neck to your toes, and offers delicious stretching with each movement. 

Pilates For Strength

With practice, Pilates literally strengthens your entire body. In the beginning, you will be focusing more on executing the moves correctly, but as you get more familiar with them, your focus will change. You’ll become more in tune with your body and more aware of what muscles are working, and learn how to engage certain muscles. The more you practice, the more muscles you’ll work and the stronger you will get everywhere in your body. 

Pilates has a lot of exercises that focus on initiating movement from the glutes. This is great news for runners because the more strength you have in this area the more power you’ll have to drive you forward. If you’ve ever watched an elite runner, it’s like their feet barely hit the ground with each step. That’s glute strength at work! 

Read More: Build Glute Strength With Bridges

You’ll even strengthen parts of your body that you don’t think need to be strong. Your feet, neck, and even the tiny muscles between your ribs. Pilates practitioners often say they can feel muscles they never knew they had. 

Finally, Pilates will strengthen and improve your posture. When you have good posture, you can run for longer because your body is upright, rather than bent over, allowing your lungs to work better. 

Pilates for Mobility

Just as Pilates strengthens your whole body it also mobilizes all of your joints, including your feet. Most of us have been in awe seeing someone with no hands use their feet to brush their teeth or do up buttons. Using your feet like that takes a lot of mobility; but due to the time we spend in shoes and not moving our feet in all the ways they can, most of us could never do those things. 

Pilates might not give you hand-like dexterity in your feet, but it will increase your foot mobility. Running has your feet hit the ground repeatedly and poor mobility can limit your stride. This affects other parts of your body and can cause injuries or tightness. 

Other areas of mobility that Pilates can help runners with are: 

• Neck, for looking over your shoulder to avoid cars.
• Shoulders, to relieve forward-rounding and tightness; this will improve your arm swing which helps to propel you forward. 
• Tight hips, which limit your hip extension and rotation – and thus your gait. 

Both the mat and the apparatuses have exercises that address multiple areas of mobility in just one exercise. 

Read More: Pilates Helps With Foot & Ankle Mobility for Runners

Pilates for Flexibility

Finally, the last ingredient that makes Pilates one of the best workouts for runners: Flexibility. Each exercise also has some component of stretching in it, which feels amazing after a long, challenging run. As a beginner at Pilates, I didn’t feel a stretch in some of the exercises. With practice, though, I gained awareness of how I use and move my body and learned how to feel the stretches. 

Read More: You Don’t Need to Be Flexible to Do Pilates

Pilates Has Everything a Runner Needs

Pilates is a workout for runners who want to keep running. It will help you recover faster. You’ll run with more power and speed. Pilates will also greatly reduce pain and tightness related to running (and everything else you do). Get strong, mobile, and flexible so you can do all the things you love (like run!)