The second edition of The Runner’s Guide to Yoga is now available! It features updated photographs in addition to the originals, all of which depict real (and some really fast) runners in realistic expressions of poses real athletes can conceivably do and benefit from doing. You can order your paper copy today at Amazon and get an Amazon Kindle copy, too. (I’ll have personalized signed copies available in the next few weeks, in time for holiday gifts.) And I’d love a five-star review there—it makes a huge difference in helping other potential readers find the book so they can find balance and connection through yoga.
Yoga Journal is running excerpts from the book. The first one shows my Parking Lot Yoga routine, the perfect prerun warmup.
Static stretches, like you do holding a yoga pose, are useful for building strength and flexibility, but a dynamic warm-up is best before a run. In a dynamic warm-up routine, you’ll move in and out of poses without lingering in them. The goal is to move through your range of motion, priming the muscles for the work you will soon do. The dynamic warm-up helps get the appropriate muscles firing, with a special focus on the lower legs and hips. While waking up your sense of balance and focus, you’ll activate your glutes and the muscles that support your ankles. That will ensure you begin your run with appropriate muscular engagement, keeping the workload in the right muscles, which can help prevent injury down the line. Plus, all the whole routine is standing, which is perfect if you want to do it right on the gravelly road or mucky trail you’re about to run on and don’t want to put your hands on the ground.
Read the full excerpt here, and enjoy the beautiful modeling by running coach, yoga teacher, and Carolina Yoga Company studio manager Jenni Tarma.