Running is an excellent way to stay in shape, but unless you’ve got enough energy to sustain you, your sessions might be cut short sooner than expected.
Here are few tips on how to boost your energy for running, which should help amateurs and enthusiasts alike.
Diversify Your Exercise Routine
If you love running, it might be tempting to only complete this type of activity to keep fit. However, it’s better to try as many different types of exercise as possible and mix things up to avoid getting into a rut.
This isn’t just about ensuring that all of your muscle groups are maintained effectively, it’s also about improving your mood and making sure that your body responds well to all forms of exertion.
This will also ensure that your body can store and use energy efficiently, helping you to run stronger and further.
Optimise Your Diet
Eating well is just as important as exercising if you want to improve your overall health. And if you plan to run regularly, then you should make sure that you think carefully about what you eat before, during and after a session.
Always remember to start the day with a breakfast that ticks all of the important boxes. Carbs, fats and even sugars can be useful if you are going to be burning through energy on a run later in the day.
If you’re short on time, greens powder can be an excellent, well-rounded addition to any breakfast, supplying not just energy but also vitamins and proteins that will help enhance your body’s performance.
Eating consistently throughout the day is also important, since this maintains your energy levels at a steady rate, rather than giving you peaks and troughs.
Finally, you should remember to eat something wholesome and energy-rich immediately after a run to prevent you feeling drained and lethargic as your body plays catch-up.
Learn To Love Sleep
Getting a good night’s rest before a run is important and, indeed, the act of exercise itself can help to give you a restful time when you need to grab some sleep. However, another good way to prepare your body for a lot of exertion is to take a nap.
Napping for longer than 45 minutes is a bad idea, but experts recommend that the ideal length of a daytime snooze should be around 20 minutes. Any more than that and you might disrupt your nightly sleep pattern, any less and you won’t get the energy-boosting benefits.
Focus Your Mind
A lot of runners believe that the difference between being average and being exceptional is more to do with the mind than the body. So it makes sense to keep your brain on a level pegging, as well as looking after your body.
Meditation is a useful tool that many runners use to set themselves up for a solo jaunt or a competitive race. It can also be a helpful way to wind down afterwards.
If you want to take things even further and combine physical and mental wellbeing in one simple exercise, then yoga is your best bet.
Classes led by a trained professional will be a useful starting point, but once you have learned how to perform a few moves, you can practise in your own time and incorporate it into your running schedule.
Yoga is also great at improving the way you control your breathing, which is obviously important for runners.
As you can see, boosting your energy when you go for a run is a holistic process, but one which offers great rewards for those that pursue it.
