Lions, Tigers, & IT Bands... Oh My!

It's been said and seen (from many sources) that running is a dangerous sport with a 79% injury rate. Well, if you held that statistic to our group, we are sitting at an injury rate of 75% right now. Fingers crossed, knocking on wood we don't hit 100%-- ouch!

We've been conscious of resting when tired. Armed with MyFitnessPal accounts, we're becoming more aware of our nutrition. Yet we still have three out of four who currently have or had an injury. What's the deal?

After discussion and comparing what we do outside of running/workout, we decided none of us are stretching the adequate amount that we should. And so I have put together a little note sheet of some stretches for us to do- after running, working out, AND in our spare time.

If you just asked yourself, "Spare time? What's that?" All four of us have the exact same thought. We all work "8-5" jobs which easily and most days looks more like 8-7 (or later) with some occasional weekends thrown in there. Two of us are working on a Ph.D. part-time. One of us teaches a course at the university on the side while another serves as an advisor to an active student organization. Then on top of ALL of this we attempt to hold some sort of a social life. Don't forget- we're still running and working out. Whew...

To put it lightly, we know busy. Being told, "You need to stretch for at least 10 minutes each day" only solicits eye rolls. No, 10 minutes is not that long of a time. In the grand scheme of things, if you want to get nerdy with it, 10 minutes is 0.7% of the day. In the rush of life, that is too much time. Sadly when life tends to ramp up and get busy, our personal wellness is the first to fall to the wayside. Stretching seems to be one of those things that you only think about when you start hurting in the middle of a run or workout. It's in those moments of pain that the importance of stretching hits you, but all too often that's a little too late.

So, we don't have 10 minutes to spare daily for stretching (we probably do- but why fight reasoning). My response- let's incorporate it into our daily tasks. I've been doing some research and have come up with/compiled "office friendly" stretches that can be incorporated into our work lives to help with our more active lifestyles.

Across the top you should see some newly added pages with some stretching tips and actual stretches- some office friendly, some not so much. This is what we're trying to do to better our runs to prevent further injuries without overloading our already full days. What do you do in your recovery time in the midst of this chaos we call life?