Gillanders running the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach.
When Robert Gillanders tells runners they can find the time to work on core strength, he's speaking from experience.
Gillanders, who frequently works with both elite and amateur runners through his physical therapy practice at the Water Street Gym, is running the Grindstone 100, his first hundred-mile race, this weekend. Though Gillanders' training schedule often includes as many as 70 miles per wee,. plus three to five hours of cross-training, he manages to work two to three core-strength sessions into his weekly schedule, too.
"When I went into this, I knew this had to be one of my key workouts," says Gillanders, also the team physical therapist for Pacers’ elite running team. "My goal was to go into this being as fit as possible — not thinking just about running endless miles, but about what else I can do to get my body ready."
Gillanders created a set of injury-preventing core and hip-strengthening exercises for the DC Running Examiner back in July (check out the full story here.) He's created another set here, and says the variation of the side plank shown is part of his own routine. He says he also regularly includes the variation of the side plank shown here, as well as some variation of a front plank and the side-shuffle with a band shown in his first workout.
Examiner readers who have stuck with the first injury-preventing core workout since the beginning will be pleased to know that they can likely scale back to a "maintenance mode" of only a couple times per week.
"I tell people that if you're starting from having never done workouts like these, you need to do more than one to two times a week," Gillanders says. "But maintenance work can be done just a couple times a week."
For more information, contact Gillanders at robert@waterstreetgym.com.
Comments