Running for your physical and mental well-being? Here's how to avoid getting sidelined!

You've perhaps not been involved in exercise for some time. You were not keen on PE at school. You now feel you should look after yourself a bit better. You've found that running and exercise in general is great for your mood and gives you some me time to escape the kids or responsibility for some time. Or you are so glad you found running as it came at the right time for you. And I wasn't in a good place, running was meant to be. Sound familiar to you? I think we all fit into one of these categories. So why am I writing this? After all, I am always going on about how exercise is good for you, and with my monthly guest bloggers who have told their stories of what exercise has done for their physical and mental well-being, where is this going, you may ask? Speaking from personal and professional experience, I see people who get the bug. I see people have a new lease of life. I see people gain new friends and feel they have a social life again. I also see people who say running has helped them manage their mental health, why didn't they do it before? They look forward to running! And then injury strikes! They suddenly can't run. They miss out on their social interaction, they see their mental health declining again. They start to lose hope. They feel they'll never run again. Below is some of my tips to you, to reduce this risk of happening.

1. Too much too soon! Probably the most common reason for getting injured. Most people who get sidelined is because they do too much too soon. For example: Someone who has probably never run before, has found they're doing quite well. They can do a mile, then 3 miles, then they go up to 6 miles. Then they feel they need another challenge: a half marathon, all in a relatively short period of time. When I put the distances down like that, you can see the increase isn't linear. IE: the distance isn't going up by the same amount:

1,2,3,4,5.

The distance is going up exponentially:

1,3,6,13.

This is sometimes more than doubling! Your body can't cope with this exponential increase and something has to give. We call this activity modification. Hopefully the image below can help visualise this:

As you can see in the first image, this is too much too soon. We try and climb the mountain without sufficient time and training and we end up falling down, at the bottom, injured. By taking our time and finding the slope around the other side of the mountain, we can gradually climb the mountain, get to the top (our goal in running distance) injury free. It may take more time, but you're less likely to get sidelined.

2. Lack of strength! The reason we suffer from activity modification, is because of a lack of strength! We we do too much too soon and we get injured, it's because we lack the strength to do what we're asking of our body. If we go back to the example of the person who hasn't done much exercise for some time. That person's body is strong enough for what that person needs. That may be walking to work, standing at work all day. Putting the kids to bed. We also find ways to do things easier: Use the lift, take the escalator. Drive into town as opposed to walking. When we start to do aerobic exercise, we ask a lot more of our body. Not just from a breathing point of view, but from a muscular strength point. When we go running, we require the effort of muscles that we probably don't use on a regular basis, particularly those that we let go lazy by using the lift and escalators. These muscles get lazy and when we come to rely on them for running, they may not be ready to engage, therefore another muscle over works and that's where the injury comes from. I use the analogy of a team of 4 people in an office. The boss walks in and says before you all go home, you need to get this done. 3 of you get on with it, whilst there is one sat in the corner not pulling their weight. The 3 conscientious workers work harder to get the job done, so they can go home, on time. They go home tired and fatigued. The 4th person can do the job but realises he doesn't have to if the other 3 will do it for them. Over time, those 3 people get exhausted and can't work at all. In bio-mechanical terms, I like to call this muscle imbalance. The image below may help to visualise this.

If we use, for example, the most commonly under-worked muscle in runners that leads to injuries, the gluteals. If someone has a calf or a hamstring injury, because they are over working, chances are after assessment, we will establish that someone's gluteals are under working. By resting and stretching the calf or hamstring will alleviate the pain, but if we don't strength the weakened muscles, we are just inevitably heading straight back to injury. Therefore before you find yourself saying I don't need to go to a gym, I run, consider strength training. It's just as important as running itself.

3. Poor posture!

Something I harp on about all of the time! But with very good reason! This again leads of from lack of strength.

This is an image I use in clinic all of the time. When people are running, they have a tendency to lean forward when they either begin to fatigue or because they are unaware of how to tackle hills. If we lean over due to the former, this has a tendency to mean we have a weakness in our abdominals and our gluteals. What we used to lovingly call our core muscles. There is still arguments to suggest that we shouldn't call these our core muscles, but that's for another time. Again, if we are not recruiting our abdominals and gluteals, other muscles have to over work in order for you to continue with your run. Meaning you end up doing too much for your current level of strength and the risk of injury increases.

Stand up, don't lean forward, work on those abdominals and tuck those hips under.

4. Old trainers! They wear out! The more miles you do, the more frequently you need to change your trainers. The frequency will depend on your mileage, the brand and your natural running style. There is no right or wrong answer. Depending on the above, every three - six months. You will slowly lose the spring and support in your shoe, leading to the risk of stress fractures, plantar fasciitis and the above mentioned strains. 5. Poor advice on a gait analysis! Controversial but something I feel strongly about! I have seen far too many people who need new trainers, get a gait analysis and be sold trainers that are not appropriate for them. Here's why:

Most gait analyses only film you from the knee downwards. When we look at this image, it appears that this person's ankle is bending inwards or pronating. This person may therefore be sold shoes for the over-pronator. And then get's injured! Why?

Because we need to look at what this person is doing as a whole! The image below highlights where this person's problem truly lies. It will have nothing to do with pronating feet, it has everything to do with weakened gluteal muscles leading to what we call a trendelenburg gait.

When the hip drops, the leg appears to collapse. This is then seen in the ankle and bending inwards, mimicking pronation. Buying over pronating shoes will not fix this problem, it is more likely to exacerbate it. Gluteal strengthening exercises will fix this problem. The way our foot lands, is our natural running style. Whether you run flat footed or heel strike or toe run. This is how you run. I would never alter this bio-mechanical normality in someone as this only leads to more injury risk. These are the most common reasons I have seen for people getting injured from running. Advice is always easy to give and hard to follow. Sometimes we may know what advice is correct, but following it may not be as easy. It is all too easy to try and run through a problem and hope it will settle. Highly likely it won't settle and you will be sidelined. It is best to deal with the problem as soon as it becomes apparent and reduce that injury risk. If you feel you would benefit from a running or bio-mechanical assessment then like our Facebook page: