Practice Trail Running, it's an inexhaustible source of benefits.
Every day we see more people running at full speed through rugged routes in the middle of leg-breaking mountains; here we explain why:
Mountain Athletics
The sport that is increasingly captivating more runners. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of runners, former athletes from other sports, head to the nearest mountains to their cities. Their aim is to practice this new sport that is gaining more and more followers: trail running. The objectives of these "morning" outings and long distances, previously unthinkable for its practitioners, are diverse.
For some, it's weight loss; for others, it's a release or stress relief. We must also consider the physical improvement it provides as training. The improvement in performance on asphalt and other tracks. The mere fact of improving as a trail runner. Other reasons cannot be overlooked: the social cohesion of the group, the strengthening of friendships.
And why not, enjoying natural areas. Let's list some of the advantages or benefits that trail running can provide us:
Physical Benefits
Helps reduce blood pressure.
Improves the heart's cardiac capacity (greater amount of blood pumped with each beat) and pulmonary capacity (greater oxygenation capacity).
Increases and strengthens bone density, reduces blood sugar levels, and helps control weight.
Improves the body's balance capacity in all its parts (uneven terrain requires high-quality muscular work in the joints and muscles).
Coordination and proprioception of the body increase. Its ability to respond to terrain irregularities (nervous and motor responses must be faster to unforeseen ground conditions we are moving through) improves.
General musculature is strengthened, as is the ability to pay attention to everything around us.
In trail running, you run, but you also have to "think to run," in a very different way compared to running on asphalt or a tartan track.
Cognitive Benefits
Helps us maintain attention for longer and with higher quality on what is truly important.
Increases the level of happiness, positivity in the face of problems that plague us, and the capacity to respond.
Enhances sleep quality, even improving sleep routines. The fatigue accumulated during mountain hours acts as a true "natural painkiller" that facilitates sleep.
This is possibly one of the "star" advantages. The trail calms the body, freeing it from the adversities and stress of the world we live in.
Possibly, we are looking at one of the biggest advantages of running in the mountains.
You gain tranquility, serenity, and personal composure.
Helps us raise our self-esteem and have a better self-concept; that is, it helps us better understand who we are.
Enhances personal and professional organizational capacity, and even increases people's creativity.
Running alone, a person is capable of finding solutions to their everyday, family, and work problems.
Realities are analyzed coolly and calmly, with relativity and objectivity. This helps us focus attention on what is truly important and possible solutions.
We previously said that in the mountains you have to "think to run." We add that running through them "helps us think better about what we should do."
Improves short, medium, and long-term memory capacity.
Enables an improvement in spatial orientation, to better analyze distances and routes.
We become true "navigators" of dry land.
Increases the capacity for determination to achieve a specific goal, no matter how difficult.
Emotional Benefits
It gives us social satisfaction, it unites us more, it cohesifies us as a human swarm since the efforts are mutual, prolonged, and highly emotional.
It strengthens friendships, shared adventures, routes, and adversities that boost the group's social networks.
It helps accept differences, distinctions, and the variability of opinions or mentalities. Spending so much time with someone develops our capacity for respect, tolerance, and adaptation to others.
It facilitates social relationships, positive and constructive communication, strengthening group ties to previously unthinkable levels.
It provides the social and democratic reflection we so desperately need. Many ideas and opinions are shared, hundreds of conversations occur that are accepted and respected by all. Effort unites, it never destroys, and if it is shared, it is more cherished by all.
It makes us more humble; trail running makes us more human. That really, ALL SPORTS ACHIEVE THIS. And as we said at the beginning, the new "MOUNTAIN ATHLETICS."
Other advantages
Intrinsically, it is a genuine "natural" medicine.
It helps us to focus better.
To learn the most basic life skills.
To relativize all the problems that concern or affect us.
To better plan our entire life in the short, medium, and long term.
To explore the most ignored internal zones by yourself. To bring them out, break them down, and see them as advantages and opportunities for your life and those around you.
Extrinsically, trail running is a true "facilitator" of friends and friendships.
If we analyze it, we can see that its social advantages are many and highly relevant: Health and mountains to all of us who love the mountains and practice athletics on their slopes, hillsides, valleys, and forests.
Ultimately, trail runners are still nomadic beings who escape to the mountains to become what we were hundreds or thousands of years ago: FREE.
David Miró Albero, Coach of the Urban Runners Club of Alcoi.
