Old school runner needs advice

Bump

On the "yin" side of the workout picture, I have used a few Taiji moves, not actual sets but warmup routines to warm up muscles and skin before stretching. Warm skin and muscles are better ready for movement. Not much in to weights and lifting, more into flexibility and inner strength.

If this is a myth or troll attempt it's poor. Running in the 90s myself we did lots of warmups and stretching.

Stretching has been proven to be useless so x nay that.

Just build strength. Body weight/calisthenics is fine. Same stuff I did 30 years ago works now. 1 or 2 x 30min-routines a week. No need to make a career out of it.

OP, I had a similar experience to you in college - On east days we would just go out and run and maybe do some static stretching after runs if we felt like hanging out together for a while or being around the women’s team. On workout days we’d run a 1 or 2 mile warm up, do some static stretching and some strides, with maybe some of the classic skipping exercises, but that would be about it.

My take on the active stretching and drills that we see more of today is this: the have the goal of activating important muscle groups. I think for someone in your position as a runner coming back to the sport, this is especially important. I think people in their 40s like us are more susceptible to injuries and we can’t get away with some of the flaws in our gait with which we used to be able to get away.

I’m only now starting to incorporate some of these pre-run drills, and I’m starting to incorporate them even on easy days (which is all I do because of a spate of injuries from not doing these things).

My PT tells me I’m not firing my glutes properly when running, so I do glute activation exercises (single leg bridges and similar exercises which I can’t describe). My guess is this is a pretty common area of deficientcy for lots of folks.

Strength training is also pretty important (even if I still ignore it). Unlike in my younger days when we would just focus on hitting the big muscle groups for overall body strength, I think the trend today is to do lots of strengthening of (i) stabilizer muscles like adductors, hip flexors, etc. and (ii) muscles in areas that are susceptible to injury (feet, calves, etc.)

Sorry I can’t be more specific with particular exercises, but maybe the concepts will be a good starting point for more inquiry for you.

Thank you for the advice.

Your experience sounds just like mine. I will research it more. No idea when anyone would think this is trolling.

I think ymmv has an excellent comprehensive description of exercises for runners. He talked about it maybe 6 months ago. I didn't keep it so I can't link to it. But, maybe he'll see this post and help you out.