Push Your

Peak

You don’t need to be a pro to care about Performing at your best. Here’s how to up your game, reduce injuries, and have more fun doing what you love.



By Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan and Presented By
MOTIVATIONTRAINING AND RECOVERYVIDEOSKT PRODUCTS

You love being active. You make time to run or cycle—or both—regularly. You know full well how great a workout can make you feel and how satisfying it is to get better at what you love. But after weeks or months of the same old routines, you’re feeling stuck. Sound familiar? Of course, it’s normal. And it’s beatable. That’s why we’ve created this complete guide to pushing your peak.
MOTIVATION
Get your mental game in shape, and the rest will follow.
Choose a
Just-Right Goal
Beginning a fitness routine without a clear goal in mind is like setting off on an expedition without a map—even with the best of intentions, there’s just no telling where you’ll end up. Instead, pick a measurable objective, like a personal record in a 5K, completing a century ride, or competing in your first triathlon. Your goal should be a stretch but still feel attainable.
Keep it
personal
"Almost anybody with the proper training and mindset can accomplish big goals,” says cycling coach Kristen Bonkoski. But keep your goals personal, like finishing your first half marathon or beating your previous pace. “What you don’t want to do is set goals based around other people, à la ‘finish in the top 20,'” Bonkoski says.
Expand your
goal-setting
Don’t be afraid to include mental goals, says Brianna Cope, a pro surfer, avid runner, and ambassador for KT Tape. For example, in her last marathon, her goal was to squash the negative self-talk that plagued her in past races.
Set a
schedule
Whatever your goal, you’ll also need a deadline. How long it will take you to train depends on your current fitness level, but six to eight weeks is reasonable for a shorter-distance goal, like your first 10K. For longer distances or bigger reaches, give yourself more like 16 weeks.
Stick
With It
Everybody has moments when enthusiasm wanes. Try connecting with a trainer, friend, or local club—it’s harder to bail when someone is expecting you. Calendar your workouts for the week to make sure a day doesn’t get away from you. And lay out your gear the night before your workout so you’re ready to go when it’s training time.
Training and Recovery
Take it to the next level with advice from the pros.

Endurance

Cardiovascular fitness is the engine that powers your performance and enables you to achieve bigger goals. Train your heart and lungs to boost the supply of oxygen-rich blood to your body, and you can go longer, faster. 

Stamina and Speed

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Strength

Strong legs, arms, and core improve power, increase efficiency, and help reduce pain and injury. Incorporate resistance training—weight lifting, bands, and body-weight moves like push-ups—into your routine twice a week.

Target Key Muscles

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Staying Healthy

Nothing slams the brakes on your fitness goals like a sprain, strain, or other painful injury. And while there’s no way to guarantee you won’t get hurt, you can lower your risk of being sidelined with these tips for healthy workouts.

Warm Up and Cool Down

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Recovery

A critical part of any workout routine? Not working out. Rest is the key to making muscular and cardiovascular gains. Enhance your recovery with cold therapy, hydration, kinesiology tape, and magnesium creams.

The Power of Rest

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Cardiovascular fitness is the engine that powers your performance and enables you to achieve bigger goals. Train your heart and lungs to boost the supply of oxygen-rich blood to your body, and you can go longer, faster. 
The key to effective cardio training is mixing longer endurance sessions with high-intensity intervals. “If we’re only doing one thing over and over, that’s when we pick up overuse injuries,” says Dr. Kyle Richmond, a sports chiropractor and KT Tape ambassador. Try adapting a weekly plan like the one below, and use KT Tape Pro Ice to ensure you feel your best. Stephanie Pi, a doctor of physical therapy and running coach, shows how KT Tape can help with three common overuse injuries—runner’s knee, achilles tendonitis, and shin splints—in this video.

‍Endurance work: 1 or 2 days
On stamina days, stick to a manageable pace. You want to be in Zone 2, or 60 percent to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate. (Get a ballpark figure for your max by subtracting your age from 220.) “It’s a little more than a conversational pace—something you can hold for hours,” Richmond says. 

Include one long run or ride every week (hello, weekend session!). The exact length will depend on your goals, but this is where you want to be working up to your target distance. 

Aim to increase your distance by about 10 percent every month. 

‍Speed work: 1 or 2 days
‍On speed days, shorter, harder efforts are the name of the game. “You want to touch your high heart rate about once a week,” Richmond says. “You don’t have to spend a lot of time there, but you have to remind your body that you can achieve it.” Bumping up the intensity also keeps you from plateauing, according to Dr. Erin Hassler, an athletic trainer and member of KT’s Sports Medicine Advisory Board.

Interval training is a key way to incorporate higher intensities. Brianna Cope was shocked at how quickly she improved her running performance when she added sprint intervals to her routine: “I go for ten to 30 minutes max, running at high speed for 30 seconds, then 30 seconds of jogging,” she says. “Sometimes I jump up the time to two minutes sprinting, one minute jogging or walking.”
Explore More Training and Recovery

Strong legs, arms, and core improve power, increase efficiency, and help reduce pain and injury. Incorporate resistance training—weight lifting, bands, and body-weight moves like push-ups—into your routine twice a week.
Muscles large and small, from your upper body to your feet, affect performance. These five areas in particular are crucial for runners and cyclists. Pushing yourself to get stronger is great, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer post-workout aches and pains. Add KT Tape Pro Ice kinesiology tape, with the cooling power of menthol, to your routine. It can be applied after (or before) a workout to soothe sore muscles and supply long-lasting support. And as cyclist Dustin Klein shows in this video, it beats strapping on ice packs. By a lot.  
‍Quads & hamstrings: No surprise here: The big muscles in your legs propel you forward and power your pedal stroke. Target them with classic moves like lunges and squats—including front squats, goblet squats, and split squats.
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‍CORE: The muscles in your abdomen are crucial powerhouses for pretty much any full-body activity. For cyclists, a strong core gives you better stability, lets you climb out of the saddle, and prevents back pain. Work your abs with exercises like planks, side planks, kettlebell good mornings, cross-body medicine ball moves, and Russian twists.  
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‍Back: Just like the core, strong back muscles also provide stability—as well as prevent lower back pain. Your back helps you maintain proper form whether you’re running or cycling, balancing out the hunched-over posture of biking in particular. Add weighted supermans, planks, and bridges to your strength days to hit these muscles.
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‍Calves: These lower-leg muscles are another major player in your stride and pedal stroke. Strong calves give you a solid base every time your foot comes down, helping prevent pain from developing in your knees and hips, too. Target them by incorporating standing and seated calf raises and rope jumping.
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‍Ankles: Ankles take a lot of pounding during workouts, so it pays to get them in tip-top shape. Stronger ankles are more stable, reducing your risk of injury and making you faster and more powerful. To boost these important joints, do resistance band work, ankle circles, and single-leg balance moves.
Explore More Training and Recovery

Nothing slams the brakes on your fitness goals like a sprain, strain, or other painful injury. And while there’s no way to guarantee you won’t get hurt, you can lower your risk of being sidelined with these tips for healthy workouts.
Going from zero to 60 might work for a sports car, but it’s not a great idea for your body. Ramping up gradually gives your muscles time to literally warm up, making them more flexible and efficient, and allows your blood vessels to increase blood flow and oxygen delivery throughout your body. This is key for keeping soreness at bay and can help prevent injuries. Cooling down is equally important, as this keeps your blood pressure and heart rate from nosediving too quickly. As a lifelong athlete, Ryan Van Duzer knows the value of caring for his body, which is why he uses KT Health Activate Magnesium Cream to warm up, and KT Tape Pro Ice to support his muscles and reduce soreness.
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Kick off your workout with five to ten minutes of slow jogging or cycling. The longer your routine, the more time you should spend warming up. 

“Don’t stretch cold,” Hassler advises. “First give yourself a warmup and make sure you’re getting a good range of motion at all major joints.” Stretching a tight muscle before the warm-up can actually cause injury. 
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Try adding KT Health Activate Magnesium Cream to your warm-up routine. Made with arnica, aloe, vitamin E, and shea butter, this cream helps reduce muscle stiffness and relieves soreness as you get moving.
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At the end of your workout, spend another five to ten minutes cooling down by walking or slowly jogging or cycling. Stretch again to further prevent muscle soreness. Rubbing on KT Health Recover Magnesium Cream provides cooling pain relief for muscles and joints after your big push. 
Explore More Training and Recovery

A critical part of any workout routine? Not working out. Rest is the key to making muscular and cardiovascular gains. Enhance your recovery with cold therapy, hydration, kinesiology tape, and magnesium creams.
How do you benefit from rest? Let us count the ways. Soreness-inducing lactic acid builds up in your body during tough workouts, so you need rest time to flush it out. Exercise causes tiny tears in your muscles, and your body needs rest to repair them. You need time to replenish your glycogen stores. And a well-timed break fights mental burnout. Follow the expert advice below to get appropriate rest, and to give yourself a recovery advantage, incorporate KT Tape Soothe into your routine, as running coach Stephanie Pi shows in this video.

Take at least one rest day per week, maybe two. For athletes who are training hard, Bonkoski also builds in a rest week every month. The cyclists don’t stop completely, but they do significantly lessen the duration and intensity of their rides. 
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Don’t confuse “rest day” with “spend the whole day on the couch.” “Recovery day doesn’t mean do nothing,” Hassler says. If it feels good, try a more mellow activity: swimming, yoga, a walk with a friend. This kind of “active recovery” keeps blood flowing, helping flush out the waste products you’ve created during exercise and aiding in muscle repair.

Take care of the basics. Get at least eight hours of sleep; eat fruits, veggies, and complex carbs to refill your body’s stores; and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. When your urine is light yellow to clear, you’ll know you’re drinking enough fluids. 
Explore More Training and Recovery

Rule Your Recovery

SOLUTIONS
KT ICE SERIES
How KT Tape provides pain relief and support for muscles and reduces inflammation, aiding in preparation, recovery, and healing so you can push your peak.
Look at running or cycling as your time to learn more about yourself. I always look at it as an opportunity to be introspective. It could be your place to decompress, to offload stress.
—Dr. Erin Hassler
From the KT Health Ice Sleeve to KT Tape’s Pro Ice kinesiology tape, the KT Ice Family is designed to soothe sore muscles and deliver direct pain relief.
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ENDURANCE

Tips for Every Level

Getting Started
“Take the approach of working out for minutes, not miles,” Cope advises. “If you get to whatever mileage after 30 minutes, then you have something to grow on and you won’t be daunted. As opposed to thinking, ‘I have to run six miles today!’”
Leveling Up
“Track your data and your times,” Richmond says. “Most people don’t track their workouts, so they don’t actually know if they’re being stagnant or improving.” Log how many miles you run or bike, your time, and physical measures like your resting heart rate and heart rate variability. Richmond likes wearable devices like the Whoop band or Oura Ring that continually track a slew of biological metrics.
My best advice: Go slower than you want. Most people like to run as fast as they can, as far as they can. But the real secret is longer, slower runs. We’re trying to train the heart to fill with blood and then pump
—if we do it too quickly, it doesn’t become efficient.
—Dr. Kyle Richmond
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STRENGTH

Power Moves: 3 Key Strength Exercises

Master these MVP moves.
Kneeling Ball Throws
This medicine ball exercise works your core and lower back, improving your stability and strength. Grab a ball and get down on one knee (like you’re proposing) a few feet away from a wall. The high leg should be the one closest to the wall. Hold the ball in both hands at your hip on the side away from the wall, then explosively rotate your core to throw the ball at the wall. Repeat on both sides.
Goblet Squats
Squats are great for building strength in your legs and glutes; this variation makes it easy to maintain proper form. Grab a kettlebell or dumbbell and hold it at chest level. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and facing forward. Squat down low, making sure to keep your chest up, then return to standing.
Ankle Dorsiflexion
Dorsiflexion, or the foot moving up toward the shin, is a key part of the running motion, and weakness here can lead to foot, tendon, and knee problems. Put a resistance band under a chair or table leg, then sit in front of it with your legs stretched out in front of you. Hook the band with one foot and slowly point your toes back toward your shins, then return to the starting position.
Strength helps to offset the pounding that you do in
training, especially if you’re doing mileage on concrete.
You have to make sure your body will hold up.
—Dr. Erin Hassler
ILLUSTRATIONS John [Viet-Triet] Nguyen
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STAYING HEALTHY

3 Key Flexibility Moves

Add these tailored stretches to your pre- and post-workout routines.
Cat Cows
Spine extensions are excellent for loosening up back muscles and protecting mobility. Cyclists benefit from this one because they spend so much time in a forward riding position, but it also helps runners fend off lower back pain. “Keep your spine moving, and you’ll feel a lot better,” Richmond advises. Get on your hands and knees with your wrists stacked under your shoulders and your knees under your hips. Curve your back and pelvis while looking up (the “cow” pose), then slowly arch your back and drop your head and pelvis (the “cat” pose). Slowly move through the sequence a few more times.
Leg Swings
Dynamic stretches—that is, stretches that involve movement rather than holding a position—add a new dimension to your flexibility work. These leg swings recruit a variety of leg muscles as well as the hip flexors. Stand next to a wall (or tree) and swing one leg forward and backward. Start with smaller movements and progress up to wider swings, completing ten full swings. Then swing the same leg side to the side ten times. Switch legs and repeat.
Standing IT Band Stretch
‍“A lot of times, people will focus on only stretching things in the front or back,” Hassler says. “But you have to take care of the lateral side.” The iliotibial (IT) band, which runs from the hip down the outside of the thigh is especially prone to getting tight or inflamed in runners and cyclists because of the repetitive motion in their sports. Take care of it with this simple stretch: Stand near a wall or chair and cross your right foot in front of your left foot at the ankle. Extend your left arm overhead and reach it over to the right, stretching along the side of your left leg. Hold for about 30 seconds, then switch legs.

Avoid These 3 Common Mistakes

DON’T work too hard, too fast: “So many injuries come from folks going from nothing to everything at once,” Bonkoski says. “It’s always better to undertrain than to overtrain. Always make small, incremental increases in distance and intensity.”
DON’T overstride. Big steps while running increase stress on your knees, shins, and hips—and slow you down to boot. “Take smaller, shorter, quicker steps,” Richmond says. Try to make your foot land under your hips with each step.
DON’T forget to take notes. Bonkoski advises her athletes to keep a journal with details like how they feel after workouts and in different phases of their menstrual cycles, how long they sleep, and their water intake. The journal can reveal clues to what’s working and what’s not. “If you start not sleeping well, being irritable, or losing motivation to ride, those are signs that you’re overtraining and need to back off.”
Listening to your body is so important. My body was
screaming at me when I was training for a marathon, and I didn’t listen. I ended up with a stress fracture.
—Brianna Cope
ILLUSTRATIONS John [Viet-Triet] Nguyen
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RECOVERY

Boost Recovery

Cool It: For decades, sore athletes have reached for an ice pack to help reduce post-exercise pain. Icing is popular because it reduces swelling and relieves pain—but you can do better than sticking a bag of frozen peas on an achy joint. The KT Health Ice Sleeve is a reusable, flexible compression sleeve that comes in three sizes for comfortable use everywhere from knees to elbows to ankles. There’s no leaking, sliding around, or warming up too quickly: Just store it in the freezer and slide it on after a workout.
Tape It: Many athletes and trainers swear by kinesiology tape for sore or painful spots. “Tape allows more blood flow to the area, which can increase recovery,” Richmond says. The new KT Tape Soothe takes kinesiology tape to the next level with a blend of ingredients, including lavender essential oil and magnesium, that provides holistic relief for the body and mind in addition to the well-known benefits of any KT Tape. Lavender aromatherapy can relieve stress and improve your mood while the tape provides temporary pain relief to those achy muscles and joints.

Gain Without Pain

When you’re pushing your performance to new heights, a little soreness is bound to follow. But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer. Be proactive about recovery with these tips.
KT Tape’s Pro Ice provides another option for post-workout recovery. Combining the support of tape with the cooling power of menthol, Pro Ice soothes sore muscles by both increasing blood flow to targeted areas and delivering direct pain relief. When applied after (or before) a workout, Pro Ice supplies long-lasting support to keep you on track to reach your goals.

If you prefer topical treatments, try KT Health Soothe Lavender Magnesium Cream. It features lavender essential oil, magnesium, and arnica—a formula that helps reduce stress and anxiety. Like all the magnesium creams in the KT Health family, it adds a welcome bit of mental recovery to your post-workout routine.
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COOLING TAPE

Gain without Pain

When you’re pushing your performance to new heights, a little soreness is bound to follow.
But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer. Be proactive about recovery with these tips.
• Many athletes and trainers swear by kinesiology tape for sore or painful spots. “Tape allows more blood flow to the area, which can increase recovery,” Richmond says. The new KT Tape Soothe takes kinesiology tape to the next level with a blend of ingredients, including lavender essential oil and magnesium, that provides holistic relief for the body and mind in addition to the well known benefits of any KT Tape. Lavender aromatherapy can relieve stress and improve your mood while the tape provides temporary pain relief to those achy muscles and joints.

• If you prefer topical treatments, try KT Tape Soothe Lavender Magnesium Cream. It features lavender essential oil, magnesium, and arnica, a formula that helps reduce stress and anxiety. Like all the magnesium creams in the KT Health family, it adds a welcome bit of mental recovery to your post-workout routine.