FAQ

Anyone who wants to become a better runner and avoid common running injuries, including:
- High School athletes who want to become better runners
- Adult runners, from competitive master's runners to novice runners
- Collegiate athletes looking to supplement their current training
- High School coaches who are looking for a systematic progression of exercises to keep their team healthy and to improve performance

- Over 100 different exercises to prevent injury, improve general strength and decrease ground contact time. Some of the exercises are presented individually while others are presented in the context of a routine consisting of several exercises.

- PDFs with sequential photos of all of the exercises presented in the DVD, allowing an athlete to view the DVD then take the printed PDF to practice as a reference.

- iPod/iTunes compatible .m4v files as well as Windows Media .mwv files of all DVD content allowing coaches and athletes to take the videos with them to practice.

- Bonus Features including an interview and demonstration of the Tempo Warm-Up with 2008 Olympian Christian Smith as well as an interview with former University of Colorado star Brent Vaughn.

- Over 90 different exercises to prevent injury, improve general strength and decrease ground contact time. Vol.2 extends the principles of Vol.1 with the biggest change being that props are used - medicine ball, swissballs, hurdles, etc. are employed in many of the routines.

- Many of the routines in Vol.2 are significanlty more challenging than those presented in Vol.1, yet the DVD will be useful for a variety of runners from adult road racers to middle school students.

-Three safe but effective Plyometric routines are presented in this volume; the routines are done in the sand, making the activity more concentric than eccentric.

- PDFs with sequential photos of all of the exercises presented in the DVD, allowing an athlete to view the DVD then take the printed PDF to practice as a reference.

- iPod/iTunes compatible .m4v files as well as Windows Media .mwv files of all DVD content allowing coaches and athletes to take the videos with them to practice.

Jay Johnson is a former University of Colorado coach who writes a weekly blog for NikeRunning.com and works with a small number of athletes in the Denver/Boulder area. Mike Smith is the head cross country coach and middle distance coach at Kansas State University. Jay produced and edited the DVD content while Mike provided the "recipe" of various preventive strategies, general strength strategies and ground contact strategies. All of the subjects in the video are current or former Kansas State University athletes.

Yes! You can download any or all of the content on the DVD in the iTunes/iPod compatible (.m4v) or Windows Media (.wmv) formats. The quality of the files is high, yet so is the file size, so make sure you have a fast internet connection or be willing to download the file(s) overnight. When you purchase the download option you will also receive a PDF with sequential photos of the exercises demonstrated in the video.

The DVD is organized into three catagories: Preventive Routines, General Strength and Warm-Ups. Nearly all training information for runners, be it in books, magazines or on the internet, is focused on metabolism and how runners can improve their fitness by improving their aerobic system. While we fully acknowledge that runners need to run to become better runners, it is our contention that runners also need to employ Preventive Strategies to stay healthy, which will allow them to train at higher volumes and intensity. We advocate General Strength as the key component missing in contemporary American distance running and we firmly believe that runners who improve their athleticism and general levels of strength will undoubtedly run faster.

Yes! The only problem with online video is that is lacks the clarity of DVD quality video, so by purchasing the DVD you will be able to view quality footage of each exercise.

We want this project to be a community service project and we felt if we truly believed this information would help athletes (and coaches) that we should give away a significant amount of content away for free! We want to help runners of all ages and we believe that anyone who implements these exercises into their training program will benefit. Specific to our goal of helping American distance running, we want to make sure that inquisitive high school athletes and coaches leave this site with information and exercises that will help them realize their goals. Plus, we're confident that if we produce a quality product and share a significant percentage of content for free that more people, rather than fewer people, will be compelled to buy the DVD.

Yes! Check out our resources page and watch the Flotrack workouts, especially the one featuring Olympic Bronze medalist and American Record Holder Shalane Flanagan.

We needed a way to conceptualize the DVD and put all of these exercises in a logical order and we came up with "Building from the Ground Up." The idea is simple and is best illustrated by answering the question, "What happens when a runner's foot first contacts the ground?" Initially the foot, ankle and muscles in the lower leg come into play, thus, we're going to show you Preventive Strategies such as the Sand Routine and the Four-Way Ankle exercise to strengthen the foot, ankle and lower leg. From there we move up to the knee and we show three Preventive exercises for the Patellar Tendon, which is often inflamed and sometimes damaged in runners. This rationale continues up to the core where the ground forces are mediated by the largest muscle groups in the human body.

United States Track and Field (USATF) has spent significant time and research money studying ground contact times - the amount of time an athlete's foot spends on the ground - and it has advocated for several years that distance coaches focus on this area to improve performance. Basically, sprinters spend less time on the ground than distance runners, yet most distance runners can improve their ground contact time and therefore run faster by improving (i.e. decreasing) their ground contact time.