Injury Prevention for Runners
Nick Ferrari provides some tips on how to avoid running injuries.
Prevention is better than cure, and by considering the advice below, you can go a long way to preventing running problems before they even begin.
Glute Exercises
One of the things you should be focusing on is your glute muscles. Every runner needs to have strong glute muscles to run with proper form without risk of injury. The glute muscles consist of the gluteus medius, minimus, and maximus. These muscles are crucial for maintaining the appropriate stability in each leg needed for running. While it may sound odd, running is an activity that requires single-leg stabilization and power.
After all, you are continually lifting off and landing with a single leg. Therefore, you will need to have each leg maintaining proper balance and stabilization to ensure that you are not putting yourself at risk of suffering an injury. What is responsible for your hip abduction is the gluteus medius which makes it one of the most important muscles to strengthen with your workouts.
Having a weak gluteus medius can end up causing your knees to be put in a vulnerable running position facing inwards. This can result in a lot of problems, including significant knee injuries. Typically, it leads to either MCL or ACL tears or even simultaneous tears which is something you want to avoid.
To strengthen these muscles, you should be looking to incorporate a lot of leg strengthening exercises into your daily routine. You want to look to integrate various exercises like single-leg squats, single-leg bridges, banded lateral walks, and even clamshells.
Pro Tip: You want to try to incorporate some of these exercises into your routine before heading out on a run. By doing this, you can properly prep your muscles to begin working, and it can force you to remember to engage these muscles while you are running.
Sporting injuries can be costly, make sure that you are covered with Medicare Advantage Plans 2021.
Use A Foam Roller
Every runner should be leveraging the use of a foam roller. There is plenty of research that shows that foam rolling can be very effective at helping you reduce any bouts of muscle soreness that you experience from running, which can dramatically increase your range of motion. It is important to remember that foam rolling is only going to result in temporary benefits to alleviate muscle soreness, tightness, and other discomforts.
Therefore, it is not going to solve the issue that is causing the symptoms in the first place. You want to look to use a foam roller to address the connective tissue that attaches directly to your bones and muscles to stimulate better blood circulation and flexibility in both your calves and thighs. However, you need to incorporate this along with glute strengthening exercises to minimize the stress that you are placing on your muscles while running.
Get The Proper Shoes
While it would be fantastic to be able to choose shoes solely based on aesthetics, that should be one of the last things you factor into your buying decision. Finding the shoes that are capable of offering you the right level of support during your running sessions is vital. After all, running involves a lot of massive impacts.
You want to try to find the right running shoes that feel good even after miles and miles of running. It is typically going to require a lot more than a couple of minutes of jogging on a treadmill to decide whether or not the shoes are right for you.
To figure out what kind of shoes you should be looking for, you want to try to understand your feet better. Figure out whether or not your feet overpronate or if they supinate to ensure that you are getting the right pair with the support in the right areas. You also want to figure out if you land with your toebox or if you land on your heels.
Also, figure out whether or not you have a high arch or a flat foot. A good tip would be to look at the bottom of your sneakers to figure out which area is worn down the most. While it may be fun to be able to try out different styles, you should probably stick with the brand and the type of shoe you get once you find a good one.
Build Up Your Mileage Slowly
One of the biggest problems a lot of people 'run' into when they are getting into running would be doing too much too soon. According to studies, by avoiding significant spikes in intensity and duration of exercise too soon, you should be able to minimize the risk of suffering from shin splints. By taking things much slower and building your way up, you should be able to do so without putting yourself at risk for repetitive stress injuries.
Work On Your Core
By improving your core, you should be able to maximize your stability. You want to have a strong core because it can enhance your balance and allow you to maintain proper posture throughout the exercise. This is very important for any type of exercise, but it can be especially important for running. You will be able to reduce any occurrence of repetitive stress injury or knee pain that results from running in a poor posture and position.
You can keep your core strong by focusing on incorporating a lot of different core strengthening exercises into your daily routine including but not limited to leg extensions, forward and side plants, and more.
Page Reference
If you quote information from this page in your work, then the reference for this page is:
- FERRARI, N. (2020) Injury Prevention for Runners [WWW] Available from: https://www.brianmac.co.uk/articles/article590.htm [Accessed
About the Author
Nick Ferrari has written extensively on dieting and is a big advocate of keto, which he has researched and used extensively.