To make sure you are up to speed (no pun intended), make sure you have had a look at Part 1 & Part 2 of The Most Important Muscles To Strengthen For Running and also read this article here.  Now the quadriceps group (as the latin translation suggests) is made up of four muscle heads: vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, vastus intermedius and rectus femoris.  These muscles primarily extend the knee while the rectus femoris also flexes the hip, which makes it a doubly important muscle for running (as we will see in the next part of this series).    Read This Article

A training split is basically what you train or what type of training you do on any given day of the week.  For instance if you train your legs on Monday, back on Wednesday and chest on Friday, that would be an example of a training split.  In the never-ending quest to enhance our training results, athletes, fitness enthusiasts and bodybuilders have experimented with a number of different training splits – some good, others terrible.  Here are some of my favorite splits I use for athletic training, fat loss and rehabilitation that you are more than welcome to take or adapt for your own purposes.  Read This Article

It’s Christmas time again and we all know how good this time of year is.  Parties, presents and time away to refresh and recharge should all be at the top of our priority list.  Now I am here right now to give you ideas for what you might give to your family and friends who are health conscious and enjoy their training.  Whether it is a “secret santa” at work or a gift to a loved one, you cannot go wrong picking up presents from the following list.  And if you are still stuck for inspiration after reading this, check out my list of goodies from last year by clicking here.  Read This Article

Just recently I attended the Level 3 Australian Strength & Conditioning Association (ASCA) course with 7 other top strength & conditioning (S & C) coaches.  The best part of this course was that Australia is blessed with world leaders in S & C and nutrition.  The next best part of it all was that we had access to them (and other experts from the United States) for 5 days of “training & nutrition nerdism”.  Here are just a few of the things I picked up:  Read This Article

So everyone understands that getting stronger by lifting weights will actually make you a faster runner and will not get big and bulky, please read this blog post here and this article here.  Also let's quickly revise the dynamics of running.  There are basically three parts to running: the stance phase (which is the amount of time you spend on the ground every time your foot touches the ground), the stride length and the stride rate (or frequency).  To run faster, you have to either a) decrease the stance phase, b) increase the stride length or c) increase the stride frequency.  As I have mentioned here, this applies to every distance from a 100m sprint to a ultramarathon.  The second group of muscles we are going to talk about in regards to their importance to running and why they need to be as strong as possible are the hamstrings and in this case when they extend the hip.  Read This Article