The key to running fast on race day: Muscle Tension

Getting fit is rarely the problem. It does not take a genius to get an athlete in good physical shape. The problem arises when we need someone to be ready to race at a specific time. We’ve all experienced a race where we completely fell apart from the start of the race and felt completely off, despite going into the race with training going well. How does it happen?

If I knew exactly, I’d be a genius, but one thing that could play a role is muscle tension. It partly explains why we feel good one day and flat the next. Have you ever wondered why most coaches have you do strides the day before a race? Through experience, most have figured out that if you do just a little faster stuff the day before a race, you feel really good the next day. One of the reasons is muscle tension.

So, what is this mysterious muscle tension? This might anger some of the scientists types, but its best to keep things simple. We can get incredibly complex on explaining what resting muscle tension is and how it can be altered, but when we do that it loses it’s practicality in application to the real world. With that in mind, here’s the useful simplified way to look at muscle tension.


To read the rest of this article, go to the following link (this should be one more blog to follow daily):
http://stevemagness.blogspot.com/2010/03/key-to-running-fast-on-race-day-muscle.html

Thoughts on this subject?  What other aspects affect race day performance?