Running into the New Year

New Start to a New Year!    With every New Year’s celebration, many of us decide to put our fitness goals at the top of our resolutions; and for good reason! If we could wrap all the benefits exercise provides into one single ‘magic pill’, we would make Bill Gates look like a pauper! There is no doubt being physically active is the single most important thing we can do for our overall health and wellness. With $1.7 trillion annually spent on the treatment of chronic diseases (1), there is no better time to start being active. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, our minimum goal should be to attain 30 min or more of moderate physical activity for 5 days /week (2).

Running Into Injury
    Running is one of the most popular choices for exercise when we feel the urge to ‘get in shape’. The scary truth however, is that running takes a brutal toll on the body, and in order for us to successfully begin running without severely increasing our risk of injury, we need to be in great shape before we start a running program. Every year, 65-80% of all runners experience an injury (3). No matter who you are, beginner or experienced, young or old, male or female, fast or slow, and no matter how much you run, nearly 3 out of every 4 runners will get hurt! To help understand why injury rates are so high, we must understand the forces acting upon our body during running.

   Depending on how fast you are running, your body will experience anywhere between two to five times your body weight of force upon every step!  It takes an average person around 1,500 steps to run 1 mile, and if they are running several miles, do the math to figure out it equates to hundreds of pounds of force the body must absorb thousands of times to complete a run (4). It’s no wonder so many people get injured; they are not fit enough to run!

   If there is a muscle strength-imbalance, or if there are faulty biomechanics when running, injuries will be waiting around every corner.   In fact, when speaking with most distance athletes, they are always either ‘in-training’, or ‘in-rehabilitation’. There never seems to be an in-between!  This is why strength training is so important for endurance athletes.  It is necessary to keep the body strong enough to handle the forces of running, so we can enjoy the feeling of fresh air on an afternoon run, rather than the feeling of pain which may keep us from running in the first place.

Watch Yourself Run!  
    In almost any sport at a higher level of competition, video is used to compare your mechanics to the ‘picture perfect ‘ model. Whether it’s throwing a ball, shooting a jumper, or swinging off the tees, you can learn a lot about your weaknesses when you slow the movement down and actually look at still frame pictures. It also gives you hints as to what kinds of exercises you should be working on in your strength training program. For example in the following picture, it is easy to see how this young girl looks like she would be a good runner. She looks lean, seemingly fit, but with the still frame of her right foot strike on the ground…it tells a completely different story!

     Looking at her hips, it is easy to see she how her left hip drops upon right foot strike. When the hip drops, it throws the pelvis out of level as well, and because her lumbar spine rests on the pelvis, it forces a scoliosis of the spine.  If we look at her shoulders we can see they fall out of level in the opposite direction of her hips because they must counter balance the action at the hips in order to keep her head level, so her cervical spine (neck) curves back in the opposite direction forcing her spine to create a slight ‘S’ shape. So what should you do if this is you?  First of all, start at the hips, because that is the origin of this dysfunction. Start by strengthening the hip-abductors (gluteus medius & minimus) which will allow your body to maintain level hips and be able to withstand the 2-5x body weight of force upon impact. If the hips stay level, so will your pelvis, and so will your spine, and much less stress is experienced within each joint.  The following picture is a good illustration of how the hips should stay level upon foot contact, and therefore the spine and shoulders will maintain their position as well!

Next week will discuss the different kinds of running styles and which is proven to be less stressful on your body.

References:
Clark, M, Lucett, S., & Sutton, B. (2011) NASM Essentials of Personal Fitness Training (4ed). Lippincott Williams& Wilkins, Baltimore, MD

ACSM & AHA. (2007). Physical Activity and Public Health: Updated Recommendations for Adults.

McDougall, C. (2009). Born to Run: a hidden tribe, superathletes, and the greatest race the world has never seen. Vintage Books.

Boyle, M. (2010). Advances in Functional Training. On Target Publications.