Anyone who wants to become a better runner and avoid common running injuries, including:
- High School athletes who want to become better runners
- Adult runners, from competitive master's runners to novice runners
- Collegiate athletes looking to supplement their current training
- High School coaches who are looking for a systematic progression of exercises to keep their team healthy and to improve performance

- Over 100 different exercises to prevent injury, improve general strength and decrease ground contact time. Some of the exercises are presented individually while others are presented in the context of a routine consisting of several exercises.

- PDFs with sequential photos of all of the exercises presented in the DVD, allowing an athlete to view the DVD then take the printed PDF to practice as a reference.

- iPod/iTunes compatible .m4v files as well as Windows Media .mwv files of all DVD content allowing coaches and athletes to take the videos with them to practice.

- Bonus Features including an interview and demonstration of the Tempo Warm-Up with former NCAA Mile Champion Christian Smith.

The DVD, along with future titles in the "Building a Better Runner" series, is organized into four major areas - Metabolic Strategies, Preventive Strategies, Ground Contact Strategies and General Strength. Nearly all training information for runners, be it in books, magazines or on the internet, is focused on metabolism and how runners can improve their fitness by improving their aerobic system. While we fully acknowledge that runners need to run to become better runners, it is our contention that runners also need to employ Preventive Strategies to stay healthy, which will allow them to train at higher volumes and intensity as well as focusing on Ground Contact Strategies to become more efficient. Finally, we advocate General Strength as the key component missing in contemporary American distance running and we firmly believe that runners who improve their athleticism and general levels of strength will undoubtedly run faster.

Jay Johnson is the middle distance coach at the University of Colorado and Mike Smith is the head cross country coach and middle distance coach at Kansas State University. Jay produced and edited the DVD content while Mike provided the "recipe" of various preventive strategies, general strength strategies and ground contact strategies. All of the subjects in the video are current or former Kansas State University athletes.

We want this project to be a community service project and we felt if we truly believed this information would help athletes (and coaches) that we should give away a significant amount of content away for free! We want to help runners of all ages and we believe that anyone who implements these exercises into their training program will benefit. Specific to our goal of helping American distance running, we want to make sure that inquisitive high school athletes and coaches leave this site with information and exercises that will help them realize their goals. Plus, we're confident that if we produce a quality product and share a significant percentage of content for free that more people, rather than fewer people, will be compelled to buy the DVD.

Yes! You can download any or all of the content on the DVD in the iPod compatible MPEG-4 format. The quality of the files is high, yet so is the file size, so make sure you have a fast internet connection or be willing to download the file(s) overnight. When you purchase a video for download you will also receive a PDF with sequential photos of the exercises demonstrated in the video. This is a great way to buy only the content you want, yet the DVD will contain bonus features that will not be available for download ......and the DVD is a better value when you consider the cost of buying each segment individually.

We needed a way to conceptualize the DVD and put all of these exercises in a logical order and we came up with "Building from the Ground Up". The idea is simple and is best illustrated by answering the question, "What happens when a runner's foot first contacts the ground?" Initially the foot, ankle and muscles in the lower leg come into play, thus, we're going to show you Preventive Strategies such as the Sand Routine and the Four-Way Ankle exercise to strengthen the foot, ankle and lower leg. From there we move up to the knee and we show three Preventive exercises for the Patellar Tendon, which is often inflamed and sometimes damaged in runners. This rationale continues up to the core where the ground forces are mediated by the largest muscle groups in the human body.

United States Track and Field (USATF) has spent significant time and research money studying ground contact times - the amount of time an athlete's foot spends on the ground - and they have advocated for several years that distance coaches focus on this area to improve performance. Basically, sprinters spend less time on the ground than distance runners, yet most distance runners can improve their ground contact time and therefore run faster by improving (i.e. decreasing) their ground contact time.

Yes! The only problem with online video is that is lacks the clarity of DVD quality video, yet by purchasing the DVD you will be able to view quality footage of each exercise.