How Pilates Can Boost Your Running Performance
/How Pilates Can Boost Your Running Performance
As a runner, you know that building strength, flexibility, and endurance is key to improving performance and preventing injury. Incorporating Pilates into your routine can provide unique benefits that enhance your running game. In this blog post, we'll explore why Pilates is a perfect complement to running and how it can help you become a stronger, more efficient runner.
Core Strength: The Foundation of a Strong Run
One of the most important elements in both Pilates and running is core strength. Your core acts as the stabiliser for your body, ensuring proper posture and alignment. Pilates focuses on engaging deep core muscles, including the lower abdominals, obliques, and back muscles. Improved core strength means you'll experience less fatigue, better balance, and more power in your stride.
Flexibility and Range of Motion
Runners often deal with tight muscles, especially in the hips, hamstrings, calves, and lower back. Over time, this can limit your flexibility and range of motion, leading to discomfort, affected gait and even injury. You will regularly hear us say in the clinic that “a tight muscle, is often a weak muscle”. Therefore, by regularly strengthening your muscles in a way which incorporates lengthening you’ll notice that your muscles become more supple, helping you to improve stride and enhance running form.
Injury Prevention and Muscle Imbalance Correction
Running is a repetitive movement pattern, where the body is largely working in one plane in one direction. Any small imbalances to the muscles or to your gait can become magnified as your distance increases, which can lead to an injury. This is where Pilates can come in as it can help to identify those weak and underworked muscles. Pilates can help to create a more balanced body, reducing the risk of overuse injuries like IT band syndrome, shin splints, and runner's knee. Pilates also encourages proper alignment and posture, which can prevent strain on the joints and tissues, promoting long-term injury prevention.
Breathing Efficiency and Mental Focus
Breathing is a fundamental part of both Pilates and running. Pilates teaches controlled breathing techniques that increase lung capacity and improve oxygen flow to your muscles. These techniques can be directly translated to running, where controlled breathing enhances endurance and prevents fatigue.In addition, Pilates emphasises mindfulness and focus, which can help improve your mental resilience during long runs or races.
Is there research to support combining Pilates with running training?
Yes! Back in 2018 a study completed by Finatto et al (2018) demonstrated a 12 week Pilates programme (which consisted of two sessions of one hour each per week), significantly improved 5km run performance by 2.42 seconds. In the study 58 runners were divided into two groups, one completing running training only and the other also doing Pilates. The results showed a statistically significant improvement in running performance over 5kms, with the Pilates group averaging an improvement from 25.65 to 23.23, compared with 25.33 to 24.61. The Pilates group were also found to have improved their running mechanics and use less energy over the 5km distance.
Final Thoughts
If you're looking to improve your running performance, reduce the risk of injury, and gain a competitive edge, adding Pilates to your training plan can be incredibly beneficial. With its focus on core strength, flexibility, injury prevention, and mental focus, Pilates complements running in a way that enhances overall performance.
Next time you hit the mat or the track, remember that Pilates can be the secret weapon you need to become a stronger, faster, and more injury-resistant runner.
If you have any questions or need assistance with injuries or improving your running performance, please don’t hesitate to get in contact for an assessment. We’re here to help you reach your goals!
Jess Rose
References:
Finatto P, Silva ESD, Okamura AB, Almada BP, StornioloJLL, et al. (2018) Correction: Pilates training improves 5-km run performance by changing metabolic cost and muscle activity in trained runners, PLOS ONE 13(4):e0196509.