Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 65: How to get into running (without picking up injuries!)
Transcript
- Cameron Cummings: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. And in today's episode, I wanted to talk about running. So more than ever, I think running is extremely popular. I can't quite remember what the figure was for the London Marathon Ballot, but it was outrageous this year. It was unbelievable. It feels like it's just like trying to win a lottery ticket. Now I am by no means a marathon runner. The longest distance I've actually ever run is 25K and I've done a bit of... trail running and so on and so forth. So I've done quite a lot of runs around the half marathon distance, lots of 20K training runs and a few sort of 25K runs at an event as well, which was a sort of trail run in a beautiful part of Scotland as well. So I've done a fair amount of running and I've coached a lot of runners and I coach a lot of runners. Some of them are very much new to running and just getting into it and other people are. up at the level of doing multiple, multiple marathons a year, even into doing ultra marathons as well, those mad, mad people. But one of the most common things I see when someone comes into coaching is in the background, there's some sort of goal around running. Now, again, usually it's not the primary goal. Usually it's sort of like weight loss related or fitness related, et cetera, or sort of training related. but there's usually a background goal where they would quite like to be able to run a couple of times a week or run a 5K or run a 10K pain free, et cetera. The reason I say pain free is that a lot of people come in having run before and picked up a niggle or an injury or have a niggle and an injury that impacts their ability to run. what I wanted to talk a little bit about in this podcast is how you manage the amount of running you're doing to avoid niggles and injuries. Now, I always want to caveat this, some things are unavoidable, right? You can roll your ankle, you can trip over something and all sorts of daft stuff. I I ran up a hill and tripped over a root once and rolled my ankle that way. These things are slightly less avoidable, right? But one of the common things that happens with running is people ramp up far too quickly, then they pick up a niggle and they think it's, they almost think it's like their body can't do it. There's concrete idea of, okay, well, every time I run, I get a sore knee. or every time I run after a few weeks of running, I get a sore hip. And then I'll kind of ask them and I'll explore a little bit about what that running sort of time period looked like. How often were they running? How far were they running? And one of the things that I think people get a little bit wrong is they think that, for example, 5K isn't that far. So. They'll say something along the lines of like, was doing no running at all and I was running three 5Ks a week and then yeah, my knee got really sore and yes, clearly too much. I'm no good with running at all. And actually what we want to take a step back and think about is how many steps do you do on a run? So obviously that's gonna vary depending on height, right? But let's say that someone runs three and a half, 4,000 steps in their run and they're doing that three times a week. If you go from nothing to 4,000 impacts, over three sessions, so you're talking about 12,000 impacts, it's probably small wonder when you're not used to it, your body's not that tolerant of it, that you end up with a bit of a knee niggle. So one of the best things we can do with running is be a little boring with it. It's just build it up even more gradually than you think you need to. That's what's great about things like couch to 5K and so on and so forth, is that it tends to progress people up in a much more controlled and steady fashion. Because as I say, think a lot of people think like, ⁓ going from nothing to a total of 15K a week isn't that much. They're like, ⁓ I've only run three, five Ks or even sometimes a little bit less than that and they just don't think it's that much. It takes our body a little bit of time to adapt, whether that's our tendons or ligaments or joints in general, our muscles. It just takes time for these adaptions to occur. So one of the things that I find really interesting is how often I'll get a client who will come in, who's like, yeah, I'd love to run, but I just always end up with a niggle. And I'll say, well, why do I have an experiment? I want you to run just one K twice a week. And they'll do that for a couple of weeks. Dead easy, probably stick at the end of the gym session or just go out for a quick jog when they're going out for a walk anyway. No big deal. And then we will just very gradually chip away and build it up. And over six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, all of a sudden they're able to run two to three times a week with no pain whatsoever. They feel a lot fitter. and they've just built up really, really nicely because often the limiting factor isn't necessarily cardiovascular fitness, although it can be at the start, don't get me wrong. You can feel like your heart rate's like 190 beats per minute and you're absolutely pooped after about 10 minutes of running. When you've not run in a long time, that is normal. But from more of a sort of muscular and kind of jointy side of things, that's often where the issue lies is actually you can cope with it in the sense that you can probably go slowly. and go for maybe three, four, five K three times a week, but that doesn't necessarily mean your joints are able to do that straight out the gate without having any issues. So if you are someone who has had like previous niggles and injuries and things with running, but one of the simplest things I would consider is rather than seeing it as something that like needs to be fixed. And look, yes, strength training definitely helps and it definitely helps from an injury prevention perspective. Of course it does. Like it has an impact, but strip it back. and look at how much you were doing because I've seen that time after time. Be really gradual with it. Try and increase the amount of running you do by 15 % a week. So that might be a really small amount like in the first instance. As I say, let's say you run like two 2Ks or something like that. That's only 4K. So you maybe only add 500 meters or something like that. So the next time you do 2.2Ks, right? So 2.2 times 2.2K. That was really hard to say. So that's a really small increase, right? You might think that's barely anything, but of course, as the weeks go on, it all adds up. And before you know it, six weeks have passed, and actually you've made quite a lot of progress, you're running quite a lot farther, and you're feeling a bit fitter for it too. So that would be something that I'd really hammer home. And I'm gonna give a specific example. So one of my clients, one of my long-term clients who came to me basically had said before, every time he runs, he gets a sore lower back. Really, really, really common kind of issue. and just often with a little bit of a kind of tolerance issue to again the impact of hitting the ground and kind of when you're running. So he said they had a real issue. So we explored kind of getting back to running. So we initially started with 10 minutes on the treadmill and he did one session and it was fine. He did another session and felt us back quite a lot. And he kind of went to that default of, all right, I think I'm just gonna leave running. And I said, let's not do that. Let's go the other way with it. Let's strip it back a little bit and just go for five minutes and see how that is. And he did that, exactly that. He did five minutes and five minutes, no problem at all. Did it again in the next week to make sure it wasn't a fluke, no problem at all. Then we literally increased it, because he was doing it a treadmill after a gym session, to six minutes and six minutes. And we did that for the better part of however many weeks, until we built up to 15 minutes of running on both sessions, which is all he wanted to do at the end of his session anyway. He didn't have a big running goal, he just wanted to be able to do that. And then the other day, he ended up going for like a 25, 30 minute run, and was absolutely fine with it. no problem at all, no issues with his back, et cetera, et cetera, because he'd built up his tolerance to that gradually. So that's one of the things that I often think about is that what's slightly different, for example, so I've done quite a bit of running and I've also done quite a bit cycling, although don't get wrong, getting used to being on a road bike for saddle soreness, getting very, very sore bum, is also something that needs to, that takes a little bit of time. But from a sort of a joint impact side of it, cycling doesn't really have that. Now, When we see joint impact, people assume that's really negative. It's not. You aren't going to develop arthritis because you run, right? When we look at research on this, what we see is at the extreme end of things, there's an impact, right? In the same way that's true of most things. It's not surprising that someone who does many, many, marathons across a year is likely to have a little bit more wear and tear than someone that doesn't. But someone who's knocking out fives and tens and halves probably isn't going to run into those same issues at all. So I think that's worth mentioning, especially with the strength training as well, that's gonna mitigate some of that impact too. But I think that's quite an important thing to remember as well. It's specific to something like running as it takes a little bit of time. In the same way that you wouldn't expect to go into gym and go and deadlift an incredible amount of weight out the gate, you have to build up your tolerance, right? Your chances of getting injured, if you want to deadlift 150 kilos, well, if you just walk in and try and do that, you're probably gonna get banged up. That's a bad idea. Really not a clever strategy, please don't do that. But if you were to go in and just chip away at it over a longer period of time, the chances of you getting there injury free are much, much higher. Because there's this presumption that more means a higher risk of injury, and that's kind of half true at the more extreme ends. But a lot of the time, if you build up gradually, your risk of injury is actually quite low. Like if you just build up your running slowly but steadily, the chances of getting injured are much, much lower. Again, in context of a sort of overuse injury or doing too much too quick, I don't mean you trip over a tree branch because you're not paying attention. Sadly, that can't be accounted for. So that's just a bit of a kind of thought process about running is that you don't need to do that much that quickly. Like I found this myself when I'm doing a bit more running and when I kind of step up, I do tend to build up quite gradually because I'm also acutely aware that actually if I've not run in six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, I'm probably gonna get a lot of fitness from a relatively low amount. Again, same applies to training. If I've got someone who's never been to the gym before, they probably don't need to do. three sets at a 10 out 10 effort on seven or eight movements. They could probably do six movements and do two sets, and that's probably gonna be more than enough, and they'll still wake up in bits after the first week before they get used to it, right? So that can be a really nice way of visualizing running as well, as we absolutely can do too much too fast, and it may not be that your body is quote unquote broken at all. Of course it may be, and there's gonna be specific context, and I'm not going to kind of go into every possible injury variation, because there's so many things it could be. or historical injuries, but certainly if you're the type of person that's been running before and always picked up a niggle, well worth thinking about, well maybe if you dip your toe rather than do too much too fast, you'll find that you get on much better with it. So, hopefully that was helpful. If you are interested in coaching or indeed anything weight loss related, then you can jump into the show notes and there is a link to my free fat loss plan and there's also a link to book a call for one-to-one coaching so you can have a little bit of a chat about how one-to-one coaching and if it is for you. Anyway, hope you're having a great day, enjoying the sunshine, because it is sunny as I'm recording this today, which I'm very grateful for, and have a good one.