Exercise ball home workout for runners

Another issue of Canadian Running is hot off the presses and on sale at newsstands around the country, and that means that Jon-Erik Kawamoto is back with another at-home strength workout for runners. Kawamoto is a strength and conditioning specialist, and he owns a gym — JKConditioning — in St. John’s, N.L. Not only that, but he’s also a runner, so he can combine his knowledge of exercise physiology with his experiences from the road, trails and track to come up with the best strength training programs for runners everywhere. In the quick video below, Kawamoto will take you through an exercise ball workout that you can do at home. 

In the video, Kawamoto says he designed this exercise ball workout for runners who don’t have access to a lot of equipment (which might be the case, with many gyms still closed across the country). As the name suggests, all that you need for this workout is an exercise ball, and Kawamoto recommends performing it one to three times per week. There are five exercises in this routine, so it should work out to about 30 minutes of strength training every session. 

As Kawamoto said in a previous Body Work article, “A stronger runner is a faster and less injury-prone runner.” As runners, we sometimes ignore or skimp on our strength training, and although it’s not any runner’s favourite thing to do, it’s still so important. If you want to take your running to the next level, strength training will play a huge role in your success. Check out this routine and give it a go, and if you like what you see, take a look at some of Kawamoto’s other at-home workouts to add a bit of variety to your exercises.