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You can always tell when someone has completed a marathon based on how they approach the stairs. If they are grimacing and going down sideways, you can bet that their quads are on fire. When your quads are tight or sore, it can impact your everyday life from your morning run, walking your kids to school, or even sitting on the toilet.
The quadriceps, or “quads,” are made up of four muscles on the front of your thigh that help you to straighten the knee, flex your hip, and stabilize your thigh. When running, your quadriceps must adapt to the stress placed on them—from powerfully propelling you forward to slowing down as you descend a hill, they have to be ready to quickly respond to whatever terrain you choose. Knowing how to warm up, strengthen, and recover properly can help you avoid sore quads.
Include Dynamic Warm-ups
A dynamic warm-up before you run is a great way to increase blood flow, activate your nervous system, and improve overall flexibility. Dynamic warm-ups prior to a run are more impactful than simply stretching the quads. A static stretch may increase the muscle length if you hold it long enough, but it may decrease your performance if done prior to running. Dynamic warm-ups help your quads (and other muscles) prepare for the demands ahead of them, making your body more resilient. Here is a suggested dynamic warm-up:
Standing clam
Toe walking
Heel walking
Hamstring scoop
Knee hug with rotation
Squats
Lateral lunge
Butt kick
Bounding
Strengthen Your Quads
If you only did one thing to help improve your performance and how you feel running, it would be to add some strength to your training 2-3 times per week. Downhill running and speed-focused workouts are hard on your quads. Doing exercises that challenge single-leg strength and eccentric loading of the quads can help to mitigate soreness during hard workouts. Some of these exercises include: standing lunges, walking lunges, Bulgarian split squats, and single-leg squats on an incline.
Be Smart About Your Training
Soreness is normal when we train, but not being able to move because of soreness is not. When you push your body too hard, too quickly, too often, it can lead to debilitating soreness and injury. Increasing your mileage, or adding hills or speed to your training are all ways we add load and stress to the system. Adding each type of workout strategically will help improve the outcome of your training sessions and wreak less havoc on your body.
How your body responds to stress and load varies based on the demands of your life, how much sleep you get, and even your nutrition. There is no perfect way to increase your mileage. Mileage is only one factor that plays into soreness, fatigue, and injury. But the most accepted guidelines state that you shouldn’t increase your mileage by more than 10-15% week over week.
Adding speed or hills to your training is another way to improve performance and ultimately decrease quad fatigue in a race. However, just like mileage, don’t add too much too soon. Start with adding either hills or speed, master it, then incorporate the next challenge. One focused speed workout a week is enough to build speed, but you can also add short bursts of speed or hills into a regular run.
I always advise my athletes to change only one thing at a time when it comes to training because your body and mind can’t handle all of the new stress at once. If you have a spike in soreness, fatigue, or an injury pops up, it is easier to pinpoint the culprit when you only change one thing at a time.
Recover Appropriately
Recovery might be the most important aspect of training. It encompasses getting seven to nine hours of sleep, getting enough nutrition, and timing it based on your workout, mental rest, and soft tissue recovery. Here are a few key ways to make sure you and your quads recover after a tough workout.
Get enough rest. Our muscles get stronger when we rest. When the stimulus of exercise is removed, our muscles have a chance to rebuild. When we don’t take time to recover, the muscles break down. Rest means taking a day off. If you are running every day, you could be causing more breakdown in the muscles than your body can sustain, setting yourself up for an injury down the road. I love active recovery and cross-training, but they do not take the place of rest.
Foam rolling can be controversial depending on the research you read or the clinician you speak to. But if it feels good to you and you move better after doing it, then consider it a worthy part of your recovery routine. Foam rolling the quads can help break up trigger points in the muscles and possibly improve blood flow.
Static stretching can be useful to lengthen muscle fibers, but it won’t work if you only hold a stretch for 10 or 20 seconds—it isn’t long enough to make a change at the cellular level. You are wasting your time if you don’t hold a static stretch for at least 30-45 seconds. While static stretching isn’t the answer to everything, it can definitely help when you are sore or have movement restrictions. But don’t do it before you run—save it for your cool-down for the best results.
If you run, you will experience sore quads, but if you use the strategies outlined above, you will be more resilient to difficult workouts and recover more quickly.
