BIG RUNNING GOAL TIP 3: Listen to your body and learn how to work ‘with’ it

Our bodies truly are the most incredible instruments. There is more magic and capability to them than we could ever understand or fully appreciate. But as runners, we can often default to working ‘against’ our body, not with it. And in doing so, limit our performance and compromise our body in the process – i.e. we can injure it!

This isn’t necessarily an intentional thing, it can just happen. As we strive to achieve more we feel we need to push harder. And it can become pretty tempting to keep up with a group that might be a little quick for us, or finish the session just to get it done when we should really call it quits.

It takes real discernment to work out when to pull back, and when to push harder. And it takes strength and agility to respect it, and put your body’s needs first.

This one can be a real challenge to master, but you don’t need to, you just need to start. Any degree of tuning into your body and how it’s feeling is so worthwhile, and such a brilliant practice to get into.

Start by simply acknowledging how your body’s feeling. You might like to try doing a mental body scan, so as you’re running scan your body from head to toe and just acknowledge how it’s feeling. At times there might be some muscle groups working harder than others. Perhaps little (or big) niggles you become aware of. The simple task of acknowledging them and thanking them for all their hard work will really help.

You could even get into the ritual of thanking your body after training sessions, and while you’re running you might vary your distance or pace based on how your body is feeling. That might mean going further or faster, or it might mean cutting your session short or slowing down a little. If you can really tune into it, real time, and start trusting your body as your internal ‘garmin’ over any device telling you what pace or distance to do – you’ll be all the better for it.

And at the end of the day it’s really just common sense. If your body is the instrument to achieve your goal – it makes a lot of sense to tune into how it’s feeling and what it’s telling you.

One thing that tends to get lost for a lot of runners is remembering that our body is on our side! It’s actually the main player on the team when it comes to running, yet when we get caught up in everything, we can tend to forget that. For any runners who have experienced an injury… maybe you’ve reached the knowing I have that it can be our body’s way of reminding us, and trying to talk to us! To tell us something’s going on we need to take a look at. And the less we listen, the louder it shouts.

Listen to your body. Work with it. It is one of the simplest yet most profoundly powerful things you will do.

Click here to see all 6 tips to get ready to take on your big running goal