On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast. Kelvin Brown wanted to know; what are the best core exercises you can do with marathon running? While a hard question to answer over a podcast, without being able to physically show you, Lindsey gives some great tips on where and how you need to strengthen.

Welcome back to the next edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, I’m Brad Brown, Lindsey Parry with us once again. Lindsey great question in today from Kelvin Brown; before we get into that though, last chance for you to win that Nokia Lumia 640 as well as the brand new Fitbit.

All you need to do in the next couple of days, if you are training, make sure you let us know what you did on social media, Facebook, Twitter, just use the hashtag, #AchieveMore. It’s as simple as that, and who knows you could be in line to win that Nokia Lumia 640 as well as the Fitbit.

Lindsey, today’s question, a great one. A few weeks ago we spoke about strength training, particularly for the Comrades Marathon Down run. But Kelvin wants to know, what are the best core exercises you can do with marathon running?

Runners want to have nice, strong glutes that are activating

Lindsey Parry: Ja, look, that’s always an extremely difficult question to answer over a podcast or an email, that’s kind of best done on video casts or in person. But what you’re wanting to do when you’re running is to ensure that you have nice, strong glutes that are activating when you’re running.

So if your glutes are strong and they can control the movement of your pelvis during the stance phase. Or while the impact takes place in the running stride. That goes a hell of a long way towards protecting your back and also preventing wastage of energy from the pelvis having to over correct and sink before the leg can then stabilise and push.

You want to focus on getting the glutes strong and making sure they activate. You want to make sure that your lower abdominals and in particular your transverse abdominis are really nice and strong because they also assist in helping that pelvic girdle be nice and strong during the impact phase of running. Then after that it’s still always good to do some lower back strengthening and some normal abdominal strengthening.

Tips for exercises to strength your core area

In terms of specific exercises, doing what’s called the ‘supine bridge’. That’s when you’re lying on your back, feet flat on the ground, heels close to your bum and you pick yourself up so that your shoulders and your heels are the only contact points on the ground. So kind of like doing a plank, but on your back.

In that position you squeeze your glutes together and you slowly lift up first your right, bring it back down, then your left leg, bring it back down and through that whole movement you want to focus on keeping your hips parallel. What that’ll do is it’ll help strengthen your back, but very importantly, it’ll force you to activate your glutes and it strengthens those glutes and teaches them to hold in place.

So kind of that’s the best one I can give you now, but if you do a search for glutes activation and strengthening, as well as transverse abdominis activation strengthening, those are the exercises that you want to focus on and that will help you with your hill running. It’ll help with injury prevention and it’ll just help you become a better runner overall.

BB: Awesome stuff. Kelvin, I hope that helps and Lindsey, thank you for your time today. Don’t forget the #AchieveMore, just make sure you tag your social media posts this week, up for grabs that Nokia Lumia 640 as well as the Fitbit, your chance to win. We’re back again in just a couple of days time with another edition. Get your questions in, head over to askcoachparry.com, submit your question in the sidebar on the right hand side of that web page and we could be answering it next time out. Until then, cheers.