Originally published in Village Eye magazine:
As fitness fads come and go, research continues to show that running is one of the best things someone can do for their health. Recent studies have even shown that running helps to reduce the risk of age-related memory decline and causes our brain to produce new cells!
However, many runners are running through pain, so I’d like to discuss how runners can make their bodies more resilient for their activity.
Before I proceed though, a plea: If you’re running through pain, please stop and get that pain checked out by a relevant professional and make sure you’re not risking long term issues.
The strength-endurance connection:
It can be easy to think that because running uses your legs so much, you don’t need to do any extra strength work for them. After the age of 30, we start losing muscle, and most of this comes from fast twitch muscle fibers-the ones not used by running. As you lose these fast twitch fibers, you’ll become slower, and your joints will have less support. Running is an endurance exercise, which means it uses mostly slow twitch muscle fibers. Strength training though, builds all of your muscle fibers, which means your joints will be better supported reducing your risk of pain.
Putting your backside into it:
When the muscles in your backside (your glutes) are weak, other areas try to pick up the slack-mainly your lower back or hamstrings, which can result in these muscles becoming over-worked or strained. When we sit, we reduce the blood-flow to the glutes, which makes them weaker. Performing specific exercises for your glutes helps to keep the blood flowing into them, keep them strong, and reduce strain in other areas. This can also help with knee alignment and IT band issues.
Balancing squats and lunges:
If the muscles around your joints are imbalanced, it can lead to pain, particularly knee pain. Many runners who are already strength training are performing squats and lunges. These are what we call “knee dominant exercises”. This means that your quads, on the front of your thigh are working harder than your hamstrings. If the quads get continually worked more than the hamstrings, this imbalance can cause issues with the knees and/or hamstrings. The solution is to perform “hip dominant exercises” that work the hamstrings more than the quads as well as your squats and lunges.
Stay strong, so you can stay healthy.
-Steve Shreeve