Rachel Oakley PT

Rest days. We tend to either love them or dread them, spending the waking hours getting twitchy and irritable. But whatever you're working towards, why are they such a crucial part of every training plan? The building blocks of progress When you exercise, whether that's running, cycling, weight training or anything else, you're causing teeny-tiny micro-tears in your muscles. These micro-tears are what cause the various aches and pains that you feel after a long or fast run (or particularly vicious session in the gym), and continuing to exacerbate those tears will eventually cause them to become a bit more than micro. But, give your muscles a recovery day - and a good amount of protein - and they will not only repair themselves, but adapt to be just a little bit stronger than before. A note on protein -  As a minimum, we should be looking to take in around 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight a day - and that's if we're totally sedentary. There's ...

Bums. We've all got one and, chances are if you're reading this, you spend a fair bit of time off yours and running instead 😉 But just because our behinds are quite literally behind us, are we giving them the respect they deserve? Our glutes are a collection of six muscles (three each side), the biggest of which - the gluteus maximus - is the largest muscle in our bodies. These muscles have the job of producing all of the power that activities such as running, dancing, cycling etc require, but if they themselves aren't strong to start with, other stronger muscles - maybe your quads, calves or hamstrings - step in to compensate, and this is where we can run into difficulties. A fair few running-related injuries and niggles can be accredited to weak or under-active glutes. Studies have linked gluteal weakness to common complaints such as shin splints, runner's knee, back pain and iliotibial band syndrome (that burning sensation down the outside of your thigh); n...

One of the many things I love about running with others is sharing goals, ambitions and what motivates us to lace up our running shoes and get ourselves out of the door. Everyone has their own story to tell and idea of what they'd like to achieve, whether it's to be able to get into a good habit of exercising regularly, run 5k without stopping, push for a PB, complete a marathon, improve overall health and well-being, lose weight... Whatever your goal, it's easy to start out with good intentions but lose focus along the way, which in turn can lead to despondency, frustration, and even giving up altogether. While setbacks are often part and parcel of any journey, there is a really simple way of helping yourself to stay on track. Get SMART Think of your personal goals - what is the biggest focus for you right now? For the sake of this example, let's say that you've been running 10k fairly regularly, always around the same kind of time - about 1 hour and 5 minu...

Kingsway Runners regulars will know that we always start a Monday session by encouraging everyone to trot around in a circle waving our arms and legs around and occasionally adding in some movements that make a few of us wince, depending on what we've done the day before. But why? In short, dynamic stretching is the best way of warming your muscles and physically and mentally preparing yourself for exercise. Unlike the better-known static stretches, where you hold a pose for 10-20 seconds, dynamic stretching uses much wider ranges of motion and helps to increase blood-flow and circulation, gently gets the heart rate going and introduces the kinds of movements to your muscles and joints that they'll be doing with much more intensity during your workout.  So what counts as a dynamic stretch?  Basically, anything that requires continuous movement of joints and muscles. For running, it's obviously really important to get your hamstrings and quads firing, but don...

After a few months of mostly running solo but with the tentative introductions of my integration into the Blue Army, January 2016 brought with it a whole host of changes that one could argue became the defining point of how I came to be where I am now. Having been made redundant from my job of 5 years and moving straight into a new role elsewhere, I realised that I wanted to have the power to take control of my own happiness. For me, this meant addressing the one thing that had bothered me for most of my life - my weight. Without a doubt, running was having a huge positive impact on my health, but the excessive cake-related binge eating wasn't getting me any lighter. Cue my personal trainer. Suddenly, having someone take shared accountability for my health and fitness sparked the changes that I needed, and throughout the course of the next year my diet completely changed, I started lifting heavier and working out harder than I ever thought I would and the pounds started droppin...

If, just a couple of years ago, you had told me that I would be well on my way to a fitness addiction within the next 12 months, I would probably have snorted in a mixture of disgust and amusement, told you not to be so stupid and reached for the nearest cake. It was 17th April 2015. I had downloaded the NHS Choices Couch to 5k podcast series and was lacing up my running shoes for the first lesson. This wasn't my first foray into the world of moving faster than a slow walk; the previous year, I had taken part in the Gloucester Race for Life and, more optimistically, the Bristol 10k, both with very little training and - in the case of the Bristol 10k - well beyond my means. I'd tried a few times to get myself to a stage where running was A Thing That I Could Do, but after countless failed attempts, the odd tear of self-pity and loathing and a fair amount of sheer laziness, had almost completely written myself off as just another asthmatic that would never be able to run. But...