What does running do for your body? 5 running benefits new runners might notice

2. Running can improve your muscle and bone strength

When you run, you're putting big muscle groups to work, like your glutes, hamstrings and quads, making them all stronger and more useful during everyday activities. The most obvious bodily beneficiary to staying in stride are your legs. They stand the most to gain from regular runs. They are also the most vulnerable to injury, so it's important to take care of them while you're training. Brooks Beasts athletic trainer Sarah Bair focuses on three key mechanisms to help runners avoid injury: soft tissue elasticity, joint mobility and muscle activation.

You also pull in your core muscles, and even smaller muscle groups you might not recognise, like your back, hips, calf muscles, and even your upper body. Working on your core muscles (abdominals, obliques, diaphragm, pelvic floor, trunk extensors and hip flexors) can help you with flexibility, balance and endurance.

Another advantage of running is strengthening your bones. Because running is a weight-bearing exercise, it helps stress and rebuild your bones, which is especially important as you age and start losing bone mass.

3. Running can boost your mood

Everyone's mental and emotional health has been tested at one time or another, and even more so after the past few years. One of the best ways to cope and boost your mood is to lace up and run some miles — the "runner's high" is real.

Plenty of research has proven the mind-body connection between exercise and mood. In fact, a study in The Journal of Experimental Biology revealed running might positively affect your mood in ways similar to cannabis. What's at work? Running fires up powerful feel-good neurotransmitters in the brain, leaving you happier for longer. Running can also help you process complex emotions, a moving therapy session of sorts. Another study in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory revealed that exercise is a practical method to protect learning and memory mechanisms from the negative cognitive impact of chronic intermittent stress on the brain. This can reduce stress, help you solve problems on the go, and return you more ready to handle all that life may send your way.

Running can even unlock mindfulness. At Brooks, we call that Runfulness. It's the effect of a run that's so good, so freeing, it allows you to forget your feet altogether — taking your mind to places your feet can't go. Running can spark self-improvement or catalyse plans or ideas that could make the world around you a better place.