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By Scott Quill, Athletes' Performance

It’s easy to zone out when you run, leaving stress in the dust and doing something beneficial for your physical and mental health. Just don’t lose sight of your technique.

“Staying mindful of your mechanics during a workout will save energy and reduce unnecessary movement to help you run stronger, with greater power and a more efficient stride,” says Craig Friedman, vice president of the Performance Innovation Team at Athletes’ Performance.

Assess your posture and stride rate using the seven keys that follow, courtesy of Friedman. You don’t need to focus on these coaching cues during your entire workout, but check in with yourself about every 10 minutes. This will help you run with intention, which alone will instantly improve your mechanics.

1. Pull your toes up

Most running injuries occur by running with your toes pointed down toward the ground. Aim to land through the middle of your arch by keeping your toes pulled up. Thinking about sliding your heel back and up underneath your butt. This will put you in the proper position to land on the balls of your feet.

2. Don’t overstride

Your feet should land beneath your hips, not out in front of your body. One way to avoid overstriding: Speed up your stride rate. If you’re running with a faster stride rate, you’ll pick your feet up and put them down quickly, making it very hard to overstride. Your feet should strike the ground roughly 170-180 times a minute. miCoach displays stride rate in every completed Workout Details chart.

3. Keep your torso engaged

Your abdominal muscles should stay flexed if you’re running tall. Try lifting your head as far away from your tailbone as possible to maximize the muscle contraction and train your core while you run. Another way to think about it: Focus on running tall as if a string was pulling the front your hips forward.

4. Relax the iron fist

Keep your hands lightly cupped, but don’t make a fist. Fists cause your forearms to tense up, which impedes proper shoulder motion. Also, be careful not to tense your fingers and slice through the air. This could cause your arms to move in a circular action instead of moving forward.

5. Keep your shoulders back and down

There’s a tendency to hunch over as you get tired. Resist it by keeping your shoulders back and down so your chest is lifted. Move your arms from your shoulder, like a pendulum, so your elbow angle remains the same.

6. Look for an angle

Keep your elbows fixed at right angles (bent 90 degrees) and pulled close towards your body. Don’t allow them to flare out. Your arm action will be more efficient.

7. Eyes up

Keep your head up and your eyes fixed on the horizon to stay tall and upright while you run.

By Athletes' Performance

The zones are the building blocks for all cardio workouts with miCoach. Each zone represents a level of effort: Blue is easy, Green is medium, Yellow is hard, Red is maximal. During workouts, simply follow the coaching, such as “Speed up to Green Zone.”

You know Green is medium effort, but how does miCoach know you’re exercising at your medium effort? In order to coach you, miCoach either measures how fast you’re going (pace) or how fast your heart is beating (heart rate). No matter which coaching method you choose (they’re both great options!), your experience with miCoach and your results should be the same.

So how do you choose? Here’s a simple comparison of the two coaching methods.

Heart Rate

If you choose Heart Rate coaching, your zones will be expressed in heart rate ranges that are right for your body. Since your heart rate reflects how hard you’re working, this is a personal way to measure fitness. It’s versatile, too. Use Heart Rate coaching while running, biking, skating, or on cardio machines, for example.

• Compatibility: miCoach Pacer (with Heart Rate Monitor)
• How it works: miCoach listens to your heart—reading your heart rate from the Heart Rate Monitor—and then tells you when to speed up or slow down to stay within the correct zone.
• Example: Your Blue Zone could be 128-145 beats per minute (BPM). If miCoach observes your heart rate is beating faster than 145, it would tell you to slow down to keep you in the zone.
• Getting started: miCoach will provide default heart rate zones, but it’s best to start with an Assessment Workout. The data shows how your heart responds to various levels of effort (everyone’s heart responds to exercise differently), and is used to personalize your zones.
• Other benefits: Heart Rate coaching takes into account how you’re feeling each day. If you feel stressed or tired, your heart beats a little faster. As a result, you can run a little slower than usual while remaining in the zone. This helps prevent overtraining on days when you could use a break. Conversely, if you feel great, your heart rate will remain lower and you’ll be able to go faster while staying in the zone. Heart Rate also accounts for challenging terrain. If it’s hilly, for instance, you won’t need to run as fast to remain in the zone.
• Seeing results: Check your charts to see how your average speed per zone increases as your fitness improves. For instance, you may simply walk to stay in the Blue Zone at first, but as your fitness improves you may find that you’re able to jog in the Blue Zone.

Pace 

If you choose to be coached by Pace, your zones will be expressed in pace ranges that reflect how fast you run. Pace coaching is a favorite among runners who like racing and keeping track of their times, since pace indicates how many minutes it takes to complete one mile (min/mi) or one kilometer (min/km). If you prefer to use speed as a unit, miCoach will show how far you go in one hour (miles per hour (mph) or kilometers per hour (km/h)). miCoach lets you pick your preferred unit in Settings. This has no impact on the coaching.

• Compatibility: miCoach Pacer (with Stride Sensor), miCoach Mobile (with GPS)
• How it works: miCoach collects your pace and tells you when to speed up or slow down. The coaching reacts to paces reported by your Stride Sensor (if you use miCoach Pacer) or GPS (if you use miCoach Mobile). Pace coaching requires that you run on a relatively flat surface—the pace zones have been designed with this in mind.
• Example: Your Blue Zone could be 10:00-12:30 min/mi (or 6:13-7:46 min/km). If you prefer speed units, your Blue Zone could be 3.0-5.0 mph (or 4.8-8.1 km/h). If miCoach observes you’re running slower than 3.0 mph, it would tell you to speed up.
• Getting started: miCoach will provide default pace zones, but it’s best to start with an Assessment Workout. The data shows how your pace changes at various levels of effort, which is used to personalize your zones.
• Other benefits: By looking at your miCoach stats, you’ll soon learn what different paces feel like. If you like competing in races, having a sense of the numbers can help you gauge your race times. You’ll also learn how to stay within the zones while fine-tuning your speed depending on the terrain and how you feel that day.
• See results: As you improve, you’ll be able to run at a faster pace with the same effort. Keep your pace zones up to date by retaking the Assessment Workout or adjusting your zones in Settings so that they’re personalized for your current fitness level. This will help you keep improving.

Can’t decide?

miCoach recommends starting with Heart Rate coaching if you use miCoach Pacer and Pace coaching if you use miCoach Mobile. Regardless of which method you choose, the training plans, workouts (including the Assessment Workout) and audible coaching remain the same. So you can’t go wrong. Try a method and see how it works for you. You can change coaching methods in Settings at any time—even in the middle of a plan—and you’ll stay on track to achieve your goals.

Still need help choosing? Visit the miCoach Forum to see which coaching method other community members prefer.

By Kevin Elsey, Athletes' Performance

Starting each week with a new goal will give you new motivation and reason to celebrate when you achieve it. Once you’ve selected your miCoach plan, set a few weekly goals that are realistic and measureable, and make sure they help you achieve your larger goal, such as losing weight or running a race. Here are a few examples of weekly goals to help you get started:

Make time

Set a goal to exercise or simply get active for a certain amount of time over the course of a week. When you schedule your workouts, don’t shoot for 90 minutes initially if you’ve never worked out for more than 30. Remember to set achievable goals.

Stay in the zone

When you view a completed cardio workout, miCoach shows how well you stayed in your zones. Set a goal to improve your score by 5 percent. Once you blast past that goal, set your sights higher.

Strive for consistency

Are you doing all your scheduled miCoach workouts? Schedule a realistic number of workouts and make it a goal to do all of them that week. You can move your workouts around in your schedule as needed.

Own your goal

There’s a difference between saying, “I will work out 3 times this week” and “I might try to exercise 2 or 3 times.” Always frame your goals as “I will…” statements. Write down your goal in Settings (Personal Info) to keep a record.

Welcome to the new, social miCoach.com! The miCoach team has used your feedback as the foundation for this new experience, making social interaction a key feature. Set up a profile, find your friends, and start celebrating your achievements with the new sharing capabilities!

If you’re new to miCoach, sign up now to get better and be part of the conversation!

Here’s a highlight of what’s new…

Home is where your friends are

The newly designed home page is the hub of your training and social action. Check your status feed to see how your friends have been training, congratulate them, or give them a motivational nudge. Use the updated workout tracker for a quick review of your past, present, and future workouts.

Be well connected

You can now connect with your facebook and twitter accounts and choose to auto-share your stats whenever you complete a new workout. Check out “sharing” under the user menu (the drop-down under your screen name in the upper right of the screen) to customize your sharing settings.

A public profile

Your profile is the public face of you and your training. Here you can share your training achievements, goals, what miCoach plan you are using and more. You can keep this info private if you want, share it with just those that follow you, or let the entire community look in awe at your achievements.

Groups and Leader Boards

Set up a training group of your own or join one based on your interests. As soon as you publish a workout in a group, you are chipping in to the overall group performance and establishing your own set of stats to compare with the rest of the group members. How long will it take you and your friends to run the distance from London to NewYork (5576km / 3465 miles)? Form a group to find out, check who’s got the best pace, burned the most calories, logged the most distance or spent the most time trying to reach your group’s goal.

A move to HTML

The miCoach team has taken a big step towards bringing greater accessibility to the web portion of miCoach through tablet computers and mobile devices. We still have a way to go here and will continue to make progress in 2012. 

Add this blog to your RSS reader and stay tuned for more updates and news about what’s in the pipeline for the back end of the year.

That’s it for now. There are loads of new features to check out, so either log in or sign up and get coached to a better you with miCoach!