Training

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

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

Maybe "toughing it out" is worth it if you’re in your goal race

When you’re not feeling the greatest, what do you do? Do you just plow through? Or do you give some serious thought to how you’re feeling and, if you feel necessary, adjust your training? At what point do you switch from just plowing through to adjusting? How long do you give yourself to return to normal training? Until you’re feeling 100%? 90%? 80%? Less?

One commonality I’ve noticed among runners is that we prefer to push through. Runners in general are highly motivated, very persistent individuals. We don’t want to give in, no matter what. That’s normally a good thing but it can be counterproductive if taken too far. I’ve seen runners run through stress fractures, serious illness that required antibiotics and all kinds of other things. Some even take pride in doing these things, even though running through serious issues like these often backfires and requires more time off later. Does that sound like something to be proud of?

If taking a few days off now or replacing a hard day with an easy day will allow you to prevent several days or weeks off later, what’s the obvious choice that should be made?

Next time you find yourself dinged up or ill, be honest with yourself. Sure, we all run through aches or the occasional sore throat or congestion. But ask yourself how bad is this really, will running through it just make it worse? Then answer honestly. Then do the right thing. You know what the right thing is if you’re being honest with yourself.

Note: One of the runners I coach motivated me to write this post I have been thinking about for a while by asking if taking off on a scheduled easy day would pose a problem. My response: "Wise choice. I wish all runners made such wise decisions."

Photo credit: nprpdx, on Flickr