AIF Archives - coachjayjohnson.com

Two habits I ingrained in 2018

I was fortunate to have the time and flexibility in my life in 2018 to ingrain two daily habits. The first is a short routine of Active Isolated Flexibility, AIF, which I learned from Phil Wharton. The second is simply twenty minutes of silent meditation each morning. The AIF work takes me less than ten minutes, though it should take longer, as I rushed through the routine most days. For the meditation I use a free app called Insight Timer that has a starting and ending bell, so the time is set. Finally, I use an app called Streaks, which costs five dollars, that was no doubt helpful as I can track these two habits.

I started doing the AIF work in December of 2017. My guess is I did it twenty to twenty-five days that month, with the obvious goal being to establish a habit of doing AIF each day in 2018. What happened? I was able to do AIF 358 days out of 365 in 2018, so ninety-eight percent of the time. I missed seven days. [Read more…]

By CoachJay

Short Running Gossary

Here is a short glossary of terms of I use when helping athletes and coaches. I had a nice suggestion from a reader that I should do a full glossary and I hope to get that done in the coming months. For now, here is the short version.

Lunge Matrix (LM). Warm-up that gets you moving in all three planes of motion. Should be done before every run, before every workout and before every long run.

Active Isolated Flexibility (AIF). Should be done daily. A must do, not a nice to do. This approach to flexibility is the best way to insure injury-free running. Thanks to Phil Wharton for teaching it to me.

Eight Week General Strength progression (EWGS). If you follow this progression you will be stronger after eight weeks. And you will be able to handle more miles and more intense workouts. Simple. Do this progression and you will become a better runner.

General Strength and Mobility (GSM). This is related to the above. General Strength exercises could include routines like Core X and this progression for athletes, as well as easy routines like Myrtl.

Speed Development. You can read this article and then watch this video to learn about speed development workouts. Great way to improve Running Economy (RE).

That’s it for now. Looking forward to a more robust glossary this summer.

By CoachJay

Stop blowing off Functional Strength

Simple question: Can you do a one-legged squat? If you think of running as a series of one-legged hops, then you should be able to squat on one leg. Why? For the simple reason that you’re going to land on one leg after taking off in the air from the other leg, i.e. you’re basically hopping from one leg to another when you run, and if you can not handle your body weight on one leg, then you probably need to go back and do some remedial strength work before you consider running a bunch of miles.

There are a number of functional screens out there – Grey Cook’s work and Gary Gray’s work come to mind – that can help an athlete figure out where they are weak, where they are asymmetric, and where they have a higher probability of injury. But even if you can’t find someone to do the screen, why wouldn’t you start working on functional strength right away? The Lunge Matrix that I use (which is rooted in Gary Gray’s work) is a great warm-up because it’s getting the body to move in all three planes of motion before a run – which is primarily a sagittal plane activity, with a little bit of transverse plane (hips and shoulders oscillating throughout the gait). The second thing you should consider is Active Isolated Flexibility (AIF) as a daily practice after your run. I’ve seen dozens of runners do this work and stay injury free. With AIF, you gain flexibility, but you also gain strength, and it’s a great way to improve your body’s symmetry.

The bottom line is that staying healthy requires work, but not a tremendous amount. Functional Strength can help you stay healthy, staying healthy leads to consistency, and consistency leads to a faster runner.

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