Breathing through your nose is important for your health. Nose-breathing can improve the amount of oxygen in your body, which helps improve your athletic performance. It can calm you down, improve your oral health, prevent snoring, and more.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite easy for everyone. I struggle with nose-breathing because of chronic allergies, and my face doesn’t have a good structure (although my mom would disagree).

In January 2021, I set out to run 365 miles in a year. From a “real” runner’s perspective, this isn’t a lot of distance, but it was an ambitious goal for me.

It led to some injuries and I had to restart in June. But on May 2022, I finally hit my goal. Here’s how I did it and some lessons I learned along the way.

The shoulder is the joint with the broadest range of motion in your body. It takes 8 muscles to move and stabilize the shoulder. Although the shoulder is complicated, there’s a simple way to improve your shoulder’s range of motion and reduce shoulder pain.

Dead hangs.

To do a deadhang, grab a pull-up bar (or other stable, horizontal bar) and simply hang from it. Hanging from a bar puts your arms into an overhead position while your weight pulls the shoulder muscles and joint, stretching everything out.

One of the best part of getting home from a long day of work is taking off your shoes. Your toes stretch, circulation comes back to your foot, and there’s a glorious moment of relief. Most shoes are not made to accommodate your feet, so your feet spend all day accommodating to your shoes.

If you want shoes made for the natural shape of your feet, you don’t have to resort to ugly toe shoes. Over the last few years, brands like Vivobarefoot and Xero have emerged with barefoot shoes that look mostly like regular shoes.

If you want to run fast, it’s not as simple as running more. While any exercise if great for improving your health, improving your speed takes more thoughtful work. If you lace up your shoes and spend some time running, you’ll see improvements, but slow jogging (or “slogging”) is a slow way to get faster.

One effective method for getting faster is the fartlek. Fartlek is a Swedish phrase that translates to “speed play,” and for runners, it’s a fun way to improve your speed.