Rachel Oakley PT

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...