Knee pain and US runners has been
a polarizing topic over the past few years, with almost every non runner
and clickbait driven blog saying that running is bad for your knees.
Meanwhile, every runner run Coach Run Influencer and Running blog
saying that running is actually good for your knees.
The fortunate fact is that they're both
wrong in some ways and they're both right in some ways.
But few people are actually looking
into the factbased evidence that runners need to hear.
So a lot of beginner runners don't know
who to trust, what's right, or how to keep running without being worried.
Fortunately, thanks to the work of many great people, we can all know what's
actually true when it comes to knee pain when running, so we can run faster,
longer and lessen our likelihood of injury as much as possible.
What's up, Motivator?
My name is Taren, and when real people want to accomplish
something amazing in endurance sports, they use motive training plans.
Let's get into it.
Since the dawn of the meme, runners have been making fun of non
runners for believing that running is bad for our knees.
This sense of superiority by runners isn't actually entirely correct.
This study found that the incidence rate of people who sat on the couch
for a living had hip and knee arthritis at a rate of ten 3%.
But competitive runners had a nearly 30%
higher likelihood of developing hip and knee arthritis at a rate of 13 3%.
The good news for US runners, though, is that the same study found
that recreational runners had more than an 80% lower likelihood of developing hip
and knee arthritis than competitive runners.
At a rate of just three 5% of the population.
This is even far lower than those people who were inactive.
Now, before US runners hop on our high horse and celebrate the victory,
we have to acknowledge that competitive runners hips and knees were worse off than
just sitting on the couch watching 90 Day Fiance.
The unfortunate thing about this study is
that it simply categorized competitive runners as professionals, elites,
or participated in international competition.
But that's not specific enough for us
to actually work with, because just calling yourself recreational
and not elite doesn't mean you'll be injury free.
We need some hard rules to guide us in our running.
To quickly mention just one last study, because it's a really good one.
This study wanted to find the biggest causes of injuries like knee pain amongst
runners so that we could all work to avoid them and continue to run pain free.
They found seven things that we all need to burn into our brains.
The first thing they found and I'm sure this will make some podiatrists mad,
but previous use of orthotics tends to increase the likelihood of injury.
Second, this might make a lot of roadrunners mad, but running primarily
on concrete increase the likelihood of injury.
That's why, in our mode of training plans,
we indicate that a lot of our long runs should be done on trails.
Third, wearing the same shoes for longer
than four months increased the likelihood of injury.
Fourth, running only once per week caused more injuries, which is why,
even during triathlon maintenance phases where running doesn't need to be at such
a high level, our plans still have two or more runs recommended per week.
Fifth, running too much too soon increase the likelihood of injury.
Every aspect of training,
from the volume you do each week to the distance you run,
to the amount of speed you run, to the amount you incorporate hills,
needs to be eased into much more gradually than you think.
Six, participating only in linear sports like solely running,
which is straightforward, increase the likelihood of injury.
This is why we have very stability and mobilityfocused guided videos
and strength sessions included in our training plans to offset the linear nature
of endurance sports, where we only go front and back.
Finally, and this is a big one that we all need to remember, running 50 week or more,
roughly 31 miles, which is something that nearly every elite
runner does, greatly increase the likelihood of injury for runners.
The fact of the matter that we have to acknowledge is that, yes,
non runners are right, and running can be bad for your knees.
Runners are also right that running can be good for your knees.
But, and this is a very big but we have
to respect that running is an injury prone sport.
We are landing with seven to eight times our total body weight,
and our entire muscular structure has to withstand that force.
So we need to practice good running
hygiene to lower the chances that we'll get injured from running.
One of the best ways that you can do this is by getting a training plan
that prioritizes health first and performance second.
What we find is that by using a training plan that's designed in such a way,
you'll become healthy, and as a secondary effect,
you will increase the likelihood of good performance.
In a lot of cases,
people who train with health first as a focus, they have better performance than
they ever had when they focused on performance first.
A health focus plan inevitably results in good performance,
but a performance focused plan doesn't necessarily result in good health.
If you are a beginner or age group runner,
consider subscribing for our weekly videos made specifically for real people looking
to accomplish something amazing in endurance sport.
And if you want to dive more into running
with good technique, click the video on the screen.
Now to watch a video about the single running technique Q runners can use
that fixes almost all aspects of running form later.
Motivators.