100-Up Exercises: The Path to Better Running Form!

I have previously blogged about 100-Up Exercises, and have now completed the 30 day challenge. I must admit that I did not manage to do the exercises every day; on average I did the exercises five times each week. The simple exercises are designed to improve your running form, so if you can't do 100 of the exercises in a row, you just stop when you can't keep good form.

Usually I stopped at between 60 and 80 exercises as my legs started to shake, or the hip burn became too much, however for the last week I managed 100 each time (except one day when I had a sore stomach and stopped at 40).

To lay a benchmark running time I went out for a 2.6km run in early April and ran at 6:39min/km. Toward the end of the run I was feeling twinges of strain in both knees and one ankle. I often had to ice my knees after runs longer than 5kms.

During the 30 day 100-Up challenge I have been running about 5kms per week on a treadmill, however a few days ago I went out and ran a 5km Park Run as well as running another 5kms home. Not only did I run a personal best Park Run time of 00:30:16 (making my speed 6:03min/km) but my run home (when I was already tired) was at 6:13min/km - faster than my original short run time a month ago.

I believe that the exercises have made me faster AND I have had no twinges of pain ANYWHERE. No pain in my knees, shins, ankles or shoulders, ALL of which were common before. Even though the challenge is over I am definitely continuing to do the 100-Up exercises each morning as they have proven to be effective in making me faster and (more importantly) injury-free.

Now that I am getting faster at the exercises in good form I intend to advance to the 100-Up Major exercises too. Since I can only offer anecdotal evidence that these exercises work I would encourage any sports medicine student to trial this in a more serious manner, including video footage of running form prior and post the challenge.