Learn how to run competitive cross country in this free video series on running and sports.
Peter Elizondo was a cross country runner for 3 years at Nikki Rowe High School. He currently runs 3 times a week for over 6 miles at a time, and has competed in many marathons, such as the Rock & Roll Marathon in Carlsbad, CA.
Hi, my name is Peter with Expert Village. Today I'm going to talk to you about competitive cross country running. In this section I'm going to show you how to stretch your calves after you finish running. It's very very important to do a five to ten minute stretch and this is the beginning process of one of them. Your calves right back here what you want to do is just take your foot back make sure your heel is sitting at the very back end and your foot is just flat. What you do is keep your leg straight completely straight there is no bend to it, just completely straight and then you put your hands either up against the tree or up on the fence or whatever just hold onto something. Then your other foot opposite of whatever foot you have down on the back with your heel you'll just lean forward. You should be feeling a stretch right on the lower part of your calve right here on the inner side and you'll really feel that good stretch. You'll do it anywhere from 30 seconds to about a minute maybe even a minute in a half. You really want to make sure to stretch that calf till it's full capacity and as you're doing that it allows the remaining of the blood flow just to evenly go out throughout the rest of your legs. So I don't know if some of you seen people where there calves look funny because a lot of times they don't do proper stretching or a lot of times you can hurt yourself because you didn't do any proper stretching. Your muscles end up cramping up the next time you go out for a run so to prevent that make sure every time that you just put your foot down and you just stretch.
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