6 Ways to Run Faster and Injury-Free

Running hard is good. Running smart is better. By focusing on small but important movements and body alignment, you'll save energy, avoid injury, and sprint past your competition.

1. Feet

Running injuries are made worse whenever your heel strikes the ground. "It acts like a brake, slowing you and creating stress," says Rick Fishell, a running coach at Athletes' Performance in Carson, California. To prevent this, pull your toes up toward your shins as soon as they leave the ground, and aim to land on the balls of your feet.

2. Hips

The correct stride length is shorter than you may think. Your feet should land beneath your hips, says Fishell. Any longer and you're "reaching," which adds destructive force. Strong glutes (butt muscles) will pull your legs back under your hips as your feet hit the ground and safely propel you forward.

3. Abs

Contract your abs so they can help you maintain good form (chest up, shoulders over hips). But don't flex consciously, Fishell says. By doing that, you could distract yourself. Instead, activate your core by performing a dynamic warmup (jump squats, for example) prior to running.

4. Shoulders

Keep your shoulders back and shoulder blades pulled down toward your back pockets. Move your arms from your shoulders to save energy. Swinging your arms improperly can throw off your alignment and increase your risk of injury.

5. Hands

They should be lightly cupped. If you make a fist, your forearms will tense up and impede proper shoulder motion. Don't carry your iPod or water bottle in your hand, because that could cause your torso to rotate instead of remaining straight and rigid.

6. Elbows

Swing them at about 90 degrees, pulled close to your body. If your elbows flare out, your arm action will be less efficient and your upper-body mechanics will suffer.

The Best Exercises for Everything

1. Best Exercise for Opening a JarThe oversize-grip deadlift. You do it just like a standard deadlift, but increase the thickness of the bar by wrapping a towel (or two) around it. The thicker bar and heavy weight force the muscles of your forearms to work harder than ever, which will give you a hand-crushing grip—perfect for popping the lid off a pickle jar.

Do this: Stand in front of a barbell with your feet shoulder-width apart and grab the bar with an overhand grip, your hands placed just outside of your legs. Lift your chest, pull your shoulder blades back, and focus your eyes straight ahead. Now, push down through your heels and stand up.

2. Best Exercise Before Your Big National TV AppearanceSharpen your brain with 30 high-intensity minutes on a treadmill. Researchers at the University of Illinois found that men processed information faster and more accurately 50 minutes after their exercise session than they did prior to the session. The benefits won't last all day, but the residual effects will probably keep you sharp long past that 50-minute marker.

Do this: Run on a treadmill for 30 minutes at 80 percent of your max heart rate.

3. Best Exercise for Winning an Arm-Wrestling ContestThe overgrip chinup works your forearms (which will give you a strong grip and wrist strength) as well as your biceps and back (to help you pull your opponent's arm down).

Do this: Perform a regular chinup using an underhand grip, but use a bar that's at least 2 inches in diameter. The side of a power rack works well—or simply wrap a towel around a normal-size bar. Do one to three sets of as many repetitions as you can.

4. Best Exercise for Powering Up Your Sex DriveWork your thrusting muscles with the hanging leg raise.

Do this: Grasp a chinup bar with an overhand grip and hang from it at arm's length, with your knees slightly bent. Without bending your legs any more, lift your knees as close to your chest as possible by rounding your back and curling your hips toward your rib cage. Pause, then slowly lower your legs to the starting position. (If that's too hard, perform the exercise while lying on the floor or on a slant bench.) Do three sets of as many repetitions as you can.

5. Best Exercise for Sweeping Your Girlfriend off Her FeetYou need strong legs. But you also need to hold the weight the same way you'd hold her. The solution? The Zercher squat.

Do this: Hold a barbell in the crook of your elbows and stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Keep your torso as upright as possible (lift with your legs, not your back) and squat until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Do three sets of eight to 10 repetitions.

6. Best Exercise for Throwing a 90-mph FastballYou want to throw the heater like Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens? Then develop power—that is, speed and strength—in the muscles of your thighs, hips, and shoulders with an exercise called the dumbbell snatch.

Do this: Grab a dumbbell in your throwing hand and hold it just in front of your body at arm's length. Bend at your knees and waist so that the dumbbell is hanging between your legs. In one explosive movement, push up with your legs and pull the dumbbell up and over your head with your arm and shoulder until your arm is straight. Do three sets of six repetitions.

7. Best Exercise for Hitting Your Tee Shot 300 Yards and Convincing People You're Tiger WoodsThe medicine-ball rotation throw works the muscles in your hips and midsection—the power source for your swing. Now if only you could learn to chip like Tiger. Or putt like Tiger . . .

Do this: Grab a medicine ball and stand with your left side toward a concrete or brick wall. Hold the medicine ball next to your right hip and throw it against the wall by rotating your upper body and hips, while keeping your feet in place. Catch the ball as it rebounds off the wall and reverse the movement until the ball is back in the starting position. Do three sets of 10 repetitions for each side.

Your Best Body in One Hour

There's a workout program that can help you look great at 20 and at 80. Every man I train uses some variation of it, and it's yours for free.
The biggest difference between this workout program and the one you're doing now is balance. Not stand-on-one-leg-and-curl balance, but the well- rounded-approach-to-training kind of balance.
What's that? You already hit the weight room and work the treadmill on training day? That's still incomplete, not to mention inefficient.
For starters, you need to stop thinking about going to the gym to "lift" or "do cardio." Instead, the perfect workout program is actually a combination of six different yet equally important component parts.
Don't worry: This plan is easy to use, and we've carefully organized your gym time minute by minute, so you won't train longer than you do now. You'll just train more effectively and appropriately for your goal: a bigger, stronger, leaner body that works as great as it looks.
Fire Up Your Muscles
The strategy: Put your body in motion in ways that will recruit more muscle fibers in your workout, leading to bigger gains in the end.
The investment: 5 minutes
The drill: Junk your traditional warmup. If this were just about getting warm, you could sit in a hot tub. Instead, do calisthenics. They not only hot-wire nerve pathways that connect your brain to your muscles, but also help you move through full ranges of motion before adding weight. If the workout is the show, this is your rehearsal. See "Kickstart Your Workout".
Target Weak Spots
The strategy: Troubleshoot problem areas to eliminate weak links and reduce injury risk.
The investment: 4 minutes
The drill: Do any of your joints or muscles hurt? If you answer "a little" or "only when I . . . , " see a physical therapist. And train your glutes--your butt muscles--and your scapular muscles, which include the rhomboids, trapezius, serratus anterior, and pectoralis minor. You don't need to be able to pinpoint them on a dangling skeleton. Just remember that weakness in these areas signals "Danger: Work Ahead" for hips, knees, and shoulders. Use the exercises in "Injury-Proof Your Body," to ward off trouble now. For years to come, your body will thank you every time you get out of bed.

Build the Body You Want

Goals

I assume the closet lady would start by asking, "What do you need this closet to do for you?" Me, I'd ask the same question, substituting the word "workout" for "closet." Usually, these goals fall into three categories:

Lose weight: If you're a beginner, start with a circuit routine in which you do 10 to 12 exercises one after the other, 10 to 15 repetitions per set, with little or no rest in between. Do two or three circuits.

If you're more advanced, try supersets. In these, you do two exercises back-to-back, rest 60 seconds, and then repeat once or twice. There are many ways to do supersets, but for fat loss, I'd like to see you use as much muscle as possible. One way is to pair exercises that work completely different muscles, such as squats and seated rows.

Build muscle: For most men, I recommend exercises that allow you to do eight to 12 repetitions per set. You can do them as straight sets-complete a set, rest about 60 seconds, do the next set of the same thing, and keep going that way until you've finished all your sets and are ready to move on to the next exercise.

If you have more experience, try supersets, but not the way you did them for fat loss. Pair synergistic exercises-two moves that work the same muscles. Usually, the first is a compound move to work a lot of muscles, the second a single-joint exercise to focus on one large muscle. So barbell bench presses might be followed by dumbbell flies. Shoulder presses could lead in to lateral raises.

Gain strength: There's no secret here-heavy weights, low repetitions (usually three to five per set for the most important moves, such as squats, deadlifts, and bench presses), and longer rest (up to 4 minutes) between sets. You don't have to do every exercise this way, of course. Start with low reps on your main moves, then do more repetitions with lighter weights and shorter rest periods on less important ones.

Big Muscles, Made Bigger

Build a Better Back

"Scapular retraction" sounds like a surgical procedure -- and, for all we know, it very well may be. But in the weight room, it's a muscle action that strengthens the middle part of your trapezius, one of your back's biggest muscles.

The movement: Pull your shoulder blades (scapulae) together in back (retracting them). The exercise: any variety of row -- seated using a cable machine; bent-over with a barbell, dumbbells, or T-bar; or standing, pulling a cable down to your face.

Latest retraction: For something a little different, try the bow and arrow, suggests Craig Ballantyne, C.S.C.S., a strength coach in Toronto. Attach a stirrup handle to a high cable pulley. Stand with your right side facing the weight stack, as if you were a left-handed archer. Grab the handle with your left hand and hold it in front of your face, like a bowstring you're about to pull back. Now pull it back and to the left using midback muscles, pause, return to the starting posi-tion, and repeat. Do one set of 10 to 12 repetitions with each arm for starters. Add one set each workout, to a maximum of three sets. This will build strength and muscle mass in your scapular retractors.

Arm Yourself

Your arm muscles aren't isolated hunks of meat. They work hardest in conjunction with bigger, stronger upper-body muscles. "If you want big arms, do chinups and dips," says Alwyn Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., a strength coach and owner of Cosgrove ResultsFitness Training in Newhall, California. "The rest is fun, but it's just details."

Dip tip: If you can't jump right onto the parallel bars and knock out a set of dips, start with bench dips. Sit on the edge of a bench or chair, palms alongside your hips, fingers pointed toward your legs, feet flat on the floor. Straighten your arms so your butt comes off the bench, then bend your arms as you slowly lower yourself (in front of the chair) until your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Pause, then push back up. When you can do more than 10, progress to parallel-bar dips.

Chin music: Most men can't do chinups. The kneeling lat pulldown is an exercise that helps you get there. Attach a straight bar to a high cable pulley, grab it with a shoulder-width, underhand grip, kneel on the floor, and then pull the bar down past your chin. Gradually increase the weight and decrease the repetitions until the weight's so heavy it pulls you off the floor. Now you're ready for the chinup bar.

Pack Your Chest

The exercises that use the most muscles build the most muscle. That's why bench presses are better than flies. "Adding 100 pounds to your bench will put on way more mass than anything else," says Michael Mejia, C.S.C.S.

Bench it up: Everyone knows how to do the bench press: Lie on bench, grip bar, lower bar to chest, and so forth. But few pay any more attention to their foot position during bench presses than they would during sex.

Try this: Imagine that you're doing the exercise standing up. Set your feet in a wide, athletic stance. And push out the repetitions as if you were throwing the bar to someone standing in front of you, rather than lifting it off your chest. The extra vigor in your execution will result in extra inches on your body.

Be a Leg Man

If you know how to squat, you can get an entire lower-body workout with one set, says Tim Ziegenfuss, Ph.D., C.S.C.S., an exercise physiologist and nutrition researcher in Wadsworth, Ohio. You use 200 muscles to walk; you'll hit more when you squat with a barbell across your back.

Squat till you drop: Here's the drill: Warm up thoroughly. Select a weight you think you can squat for 10 repetitions. Now squat as many times as you can with that weight. When you can't do any more, stand and catch your breath, then do single repetitions until you get to 20. (These are sometimes called "breathing squats," since you're allowed to breathe as many times as necessary between repetitions.)

The key: The weight stays on your shoulders until you've finished all 20 repetitions. Then you rack the barbell and crawl home.

Reinvent Your Wheels

But as a speed, strength, and conditioning coach, I've watched both athletes and nonathletes transform their bodies by shifting their training focus to their legs and building muscle there. Developing the largest muscle groups in your lower body -- your quadriceps, hamstrings, and gluteal muscles -- boosts your metabolism by increasing your body's lean muscle mass. It also revs up production of hormones that help you build muscle.

You'll look leaner and more muscular, and you'll feel stronger. Check that -- you'll be stronger.

A Stronger Upper Body

Training large muscle groups with heavy lifting produces a natural surge in growth hormone and testosterone. And there's nothing like squats to involve the large muscle groups. To perform the following variation on the squat, you have to activate most of your body's muscles simultaneously

Bulgarian split squat

Stand with a bench behind you and a barbell across the back of your shoulders. Place your left foot on the bench. Keeping your torso upright, lower your body until your right thigh is parallel to the floor. Pause, then push yourself back up. Perform three or four sets of eight to 10 repetitions on each leg.