Learn How to Jog with These Simple Jogging Tips

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3. Your foot should touch the ground with the weight towards the rear, either in a heel-toe motion or more flat-footed. Your leading foot should come down just about under your knee.

4. Landing on your toes is not advised because it throws all the weight onto the small bones at the front of your foot. This works against the natural lever-action of your foot and may lead to injury.

5. "Jog gently, Jog silently" means not to pound along the path. Don't slap your feet. Follow through on your stride so that your foot lands without being driven into the earth and jarring your entire body. Become light and smooth. As your foot makes contact your center of gravity should be over it or slightly ahead. Accomplish this by leaning slightly forward and by allowing your legs to work as pullers, not pushers. As strange as it may seem, a muscle cannot push, it can only pull.

6. Relax your fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, jaw. When you jog efficiently you'll use as few muscles as possible, thus decreasing fatigue.

7. Carry your arms at about a right angle. Don't let your arms cross in front of your body. Relax your wrists, but carry your hands strongly thumbs up. Relaxing doesn't mean flopping.

8. Breathe from your belly, through your nose and mouth.

9. While jogging, the inner borders of your shoes should fall very close to an imaginary line extending directly out in front of you.

10. The most important physiological byproduct of jogging will be a strong heart. As in the training of any muscle, you must overload it sufficiently and regularly to allow training. You will not continue to improve without increasing stress upon a muscle (a maximum increase of 10 percent a week).

11. Variety will help you jog your best. Continually jogging in a straight line on the flat uses the same muscles, in the same ways, over and over, training them, but leaving other leg muscles out of shape. This classic imbalance tends to lead to injury since you don't have well-rounded muscle support for proper mechanics. Break up your jogs, not only with stretching exercises and walking, but by searching out the corners, circles, stairs, and hills. Move off the forward, straight line by jogging backwards or in crazy snake lines for a few hundred yards. Jog in ever tightening and expanding figure eights and circles. Also, vary your gait. This variety in jogging contributes to well-balanced training.

12. Walking, called "the pause that refreshes", is an excellent break from jogging and can help you increase your distance without strain. Walking also requires your legs to move through a fuller range of motion than jogging and will help keep you strong and loose during a long jog. Every 15 minutes of jogging you might want to try 5 minutes of walking.

13. After jogging, a cool-down period of 5 — 15 minutes is recommended, because when exercise is suddenly stopped blood may become temporarily "trapped" in the muscles which have stopped moving. This may reduce overall blood circulation to the brain, heart, intestines, and can lead to dizziness, faintness, nausea, or extra heartbeats. It's also advisable to stay out of hot rooms or showers without a proper cool down as these may dilate the blood vessels, exaggerating the same problems.

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