Getting injured sucks. If you’re playing a contact sport and you break a leg, at least it makes sense. But getting hurt just from jogging feels like God is playing a prank on you. Running injuries are often hard to explain and even harder to fix. Based on a bunch of studies and a little bit of personal experience, I’ve made a simple generalized list of how to kick running injuries in the butt.
- Consistent Running
Probably the best exercise to get injury-proof legs is to travel back in time and start running. Running is the best way to make your body adapt to running, which is pretty neat and intuitive if you can run, but it really sucks if you can’t. Everyone I know who seems to never get injured has been running since they were little.
Every time you successfully go on a run without getting hurt, you become a little more resistant to injury (once recovered). For this reason it’s important to start with shorter runs and increase your mileage slowly and steadily, or you run the risk of overdoing one run and losing a lot of progress.
My favorite pro tip is to run uphill. It generates lots of fatigue while going softer on joints because you absorb a shorter landing in each step. You get more bang for your buck essentially. But you might have to walk back downhill.
- Specific Training
Different types of training outside of running will help with a few things:
Strength: This one is fairly self explanatory–your muscles need to be strong enough to move and protect your joints. You don’t need to get huge though–after your muscles are strong enough (this point is different for everyone), extra strength gives diminishing returns in injury resistance. Examples: squat, deadlift, calf raise, tibialis raise
Muscle activation: Having strong muscles is one thing, actually using them is another. One of the more common muscle issues for runners is lazy glutes. The glutes play a major role in the running stride, but many runners don’t use them fully which puts extra strain on other parts of the body. Examples: all kinds of resistance band exercises, or just focus on muscle activation while strength training
Stability: Running is a bunch of one legged jumps and landings, so balance and stability matter. Stability refers to your ability to resist external forces without compromising your posture and balance. It’s worth the effort to train your core, not doing “six-pack” workouts, but instead training the core to resist bending and rotating. Examples: suitcase carry, side plank, windmill with weight
You can do all of these in the same workout with just a few exercises. Keep it simple. Also, doing these exercises barefoot (or in flat cushionless shoes) will concurrently strengthen your feet, which is important even if you run in shoes.
- The other things
These factors are secondary to the two above. These won’t fix anything alone, but it doesn’t hurt to get them right.
Form: In most cases, your form naturally improves with time and practice, so it’s not worth obsessing over. But, there are some tips that can improve your form right away.
- Land your feet close under you, don’t overextend on your stride
- Lift your feet instead of pushing them into the ground
- Think light, quick steps
Diet, sleep, and lifestyle: Training is nothing without recovery. You recover faster when you’re healthy, so make sure you eat enough, sleep a lot, and move whenever you can.
Foam rolling: Foam rolling has a lot of known benefits. It improves muscle recovery and can reduce soreness, so give it a try.
Stretching: The research on stretching says to do dynamic stretches before running and static stretches after. Anecdotally, many runners swear by it and claim it’s helped them run injury-free, while others say they didn’t notice a difference. But if you look at the average, it’s beneficial and worth trying.
In conclusion, this list ended up being wordier than I thought. But if I had to summarize, beating injuries comes down to being diligent in just a few areas, not trying every magic fix.