Training

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

I bet Deena knows this "trick"

It seems like everyone is looking for it. What’s that magical workout that will make you PR at your next race or beat that big rival who you just can’t get ahead of? What’s that one workout that all successful runners do? What’s this or that coach’s or athlete’s go to workout?

I’ll tell you my secret sauce. It’s not mile repeats or progression runs or long runs. It’s not something we do every week for three months. In fact, ask the runners I coach and they will tell you that I don’t even like doing the same workout two weeks in a row.

There’s a reason I don’t like doing the same workout even two weeks in a row. Too many runners see the same workout they just did on the schedule again and they get competitive with themselves. If I did my mile repeats last week in 7:10, I should be better now so I should do them in 7:05 this time. Next week? 7:00. Then I’m under 7:00!

That’s not the secret sauce. That’s a recipe for disaster.

So what is the secret sauce? Simple: consistency. That’s it. If you get out there and follow the plan week after week, month after month, year after year, you’re going to see good things happen. Not every workout will go perfectly and some workouts may even be missed but that doesn’t matter because the key isn’t in any single workout. It’s in doing the workouts, long runs and easy days that are on the plan according to plan the large majority of the time. If you consistently get the plan done with only the occasional misses here and there, you’ll see results.

Yes, it’s true that some planning needs to be made. You need to do the right workouts at the right time. You need to make sure you cover your bases. You need to prioritize the right kinds of workouts. However, those are the details. The big picture is that you need to be doing the work day after day, week after week, month after month. That’s the true secret sauce.

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

I’m currently reading the book Tread Lightly*. In it, the authors mention the role the shoes you wear while not running play in your foot health and I’d like to bring this point up here because I think runners often overlook this point.

We runners are shoe geeks. At least many of us are. We can tell you all about the structural details of the shoes we have and probably even many shoes we don’t have. We think about what these mean to the health of our feet and legs. We rightfully treat the topic as a big deal.

But how much do we think about the structure of the shoes we wear during the rest of the day? We think about fashion. What looks good, what’s going to impress people, what will make us look better. How much time do we spend thinking about how these shoes will affect the health of our feet and legs? Shouldn’t we be thinking about this more?

It’s been well established that shoes with a pointed toe change the structure of our feet. Wear these shoes enough and our feet begin taking the shape of the shoes. Our toes no longer splay out as they naturally do. They get pinched in to a point usually around the second toe. Bunions are the biggest concern when this happens but we can also have issues including but hardly limited to numbness and pain caused by nerves being pinched between bones that are unnaturally positioned. It’s also not hard to imagine that, more generally, the function of our feet is compromised.

It’s also been established that shoes with raised heels give us issues. Women’s high heeled shoes are the most visible culprits but many work boots and men’s dress shoes also have raised heels. These shoes do a few things. First, they push our toes into the front of the shoes, creating many of the same issues we see in shoes with pointed toes. Add pointed toes to raised heels and you’re getting a double whammy. In addition, it’s been found that wearing shoes with raised heels over the long term shortens your calf muscles and Achilles tendons and makes the Achilles tendons more stiff. It’s not hard to see where this leads to problems with injuries in the muscles of the calf, Achilles tendon injuries, even foot problems like Plantar fasciitis.

You’re likely spending at least 8 hours a day in these shoes. Yes, our running shoes are important but we’re probably only spending around an hour a day in those shoes. The shoes you wear while not running greatly affect the health of your feet and legs if for no other reason than you’re spending a lot of time in them.

I know. I’m a guy. I don’t get the pressure placed on women to wear fashionable high heeled shoes. I also don’t work in a setting where I need to wear fancy dress shoes or work boots with raised heels. It’s easy for me to say think about the structure of the shoes you’re wearing while not running. I get it. However, consider what you can do. Can you go a little lower with the heels? Can you get shoes with more room in the toe? If you can, your feet, legs and running will thank you.

*Note: In the interest of full disclosure, the link to the book Tread Lightly is an Amazon affiliate link. If you use that link to buy the book, a small portion of the sale will help pay the bills at HillRunner.com. As always, use the link if you wish and thank you for the support.

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

Can increasing your stride rate help you become a more injury resistant runner? Can you actually train yourself to increase your stride rate? It appears the answers just might be yes and yes.

I’ve been sitting on this study on increasing stride rate for a while because it never really seemed to fit but I wanted to write about it at some point because it did have interesting results.

In short, runners were given cues to help them improve stride rate by 7.5% over their natural stride rate. The test was to determine whether impact forces at foot plant and hip adduction (I often call this "hip drop", when the hip on the opposite side of your foot that is currently on the ground drops) could be reduced. Hip adduction is an important factor in things like ITBS and "runner’s knee". So reducing this, as well obviously as reducing any forces at the time of foot plant, would be important in injury prevention.

There were only 8 "retraining" sessions performed. Then measurements were taken immediately following retraining and one month later and compared to pre-retraining results.

Stride rates were actually increased by a little more than the cue was designed for, 8.6%. Load rates all decreased significantly (around 18% with a high degree of certainty). Hip adduction was improved by an average of 2.9 degrees, again with a high degree of certainty.

Best of all, these gains were maintained a month later with no additional feedback.

In summary:

Thus, in-field gait retraining, cueing a modest increase in step rate, was effective at reducing impact forces, peak hip adduction and eccentric knee joint work.

This is very interesting. It suggests that trying to make a slight change in stride rate may actually reduce injury risk and, most importantly, a relative handful of sessions intended to increase rate seem to be relatively "sticky" in terms of producing results that last.

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

Reported on this shoe back in 2013

Back in 2013, I posted twice about the pendulum swinging from "minimal" shoes to "maximal" shoes.

In 2014, The Washington Post caught up.

Well, finally, The New York Times caught up also: Forget Barefoot; New Trendsetter in Running Shoes Is Cushioning

Only one question I have: new?

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

Last week, I posted about the importance of being honest with yourself. The runner I mentioned at the end of that post emailed me a few thoughts on that post. I think they were very good points and I’d like to address them here.

[S]ome runners won’t want to admit to the start of an injury if they think their coach will severely curtail their workout.

Absolutely true. The thing I’d like to stress here is that reducing training load at the onset of an injury is necessary. You can take a relatively small hit now or a much bigger hit later. It’s true that your coach will likely curtail your training load some if you tell your coach about an early stage injury. However, your workload is going to be curtailed much more if you don’t deal with the injury in its early stages and let it become worse.

I suppose if you throw in DM or MRTT, seeing social media posts where your peers are killing their workouts doesn’t help that sinking feeling that you are FALLING BEHIND. Sad truth is that many folks don’t post that they are having nagging aches/pains!

For those who don’t know, DM is a cross between Facebook and a training log. MRTT is a running club with a heavy online component.

As with anywhere that you can share part of the picture without sharing all of it, some people choose to do just that. In some cases, they share the good without sharing the bad, likely in an effort to appear more impressive. I’m sure we all know stories of people who have shared very impressive workouts and looked like they had great training going on, only to end up out of the blue laid up for weeks, if not months, due to some injury. Injuries generally don’t come out of the blue. These people are usually withholding something along the way.

As for that feeling of falling behind, it’s a real thing and I don’t want to discount it. However, again, I’d stress looking at the big picture. Do you want to lose a little ground now or risk losing a lot of ground later? What you lose if you catch a problem in its early stages, before it becomes a full blown injury, will be minimal. What you lose if you wait for it to develop into a full blown injury could be catastrophic. I’d rather take one or two minimal hits than even risk a season ending injury.

That trust and honesty between coach and runner is so important.

While I say something along this line frequently, I couldn’t say it better. If you have a coach, it’s important to not just be honest with yourself but also to be honest with your coach.

In the end, I absolutely get not wanting to share all of those details. And, if you don’t want to publicly on a social website or in a social group, that’s your prerogative. However, you need to be honest with not just yourself but all decision makers in your life. If you are the sole decision maker, it’s critical that you be honest with yourself about how you feel and honestly assess what that means. If you have a coach, it’s just as critical that you are honest and forthcoming with your coach about how you feel. Don’t withhold problems and be honest when your coach asks follow-up questions.

If your coach is worth anything, your coach cares deeply about helping you do the best you can. Your coach wants you to succeed as much as you do. Help your coach help you by being an open book.

If you don’t have a coach, it’s more challenging because you have to not only be honest with yourself but you have to honestly assess what your body’s feedback means. That can be very difficult but it must be done. If it isn’t, you could lose your whole racing season because you decided to run through something when it could have been resolved with a few days off or a skipped workout or long run.

Photo credit: nprpdx, on Flickr