Stop Running Injuries Through Strength Training
Give Me The Fish (GMTF): Running injuries are caused by a multitude of reasons. Including overuse, imbalances, tripping and falling, rolling an ankle, and compensation, but all of these can be prevented or lessened through strength training. Making a muscle stronger makes it more resilient and better able to handle the foreseen and unforeseen problems that occur during a hard training program. More resilient muscles make you a more durable athlete and ensure you are ready to take on whatever the trail throws at you. You can stop running injuries through strength training.
Statistically, running is one of the most dangerous sports you can do. Injuries are incredibly common, with 70% of runners sustaining an injury every 12 months. Which is wild, especially because running is one of the most natural things humans do.
If you are telling yourself, “that’s the sacrifice we make”, you would be in good company. Everywhere you look, it seems the world is telling you that you need orthotics, inserts and special shoes to “lessen” the problem.
But, you would be wrong.
Running can be pain and injury free.
Running doesn’t cause injuries; it’s how you train, how you run, and how resilient you are.
Here, I’m not going to dive into the running form aspect, but Kelly Starret has a great book called Ready To Run that is worth the read if you are serious about running.
In summary, he states and shows that heel striking is not healthy or normal. Proper running form can prevent running injuries and increase performance without the need of special shoes or inserts.
I’m also not going to dive into proper running progression or programming, though they are essential, it’s too much to cover here. If you are interested in running a 50-mile race, this is a good place to start:
But, what we are going to discuss is the building of resiliency, and how strength training can solve a lot of your running woes, even if you are a heel striker.
Muscle weakness, imbalance, and overuse are what cause injuries. Strength training can solve them.
Table of Contents
Running Injuries
The most common injuries for runners has to do with knee pain, calf strains, Achilles tendonitis, hamstring strains, soleus strains, and psoas strains.
That’s a huge list of injuries, and unfortunately, they’re all too common. Typically these are a “select all that apply”, instead of a “choose one” type scenario.
But, these injuries can be broken into two categories, muscle strains (soft tissue) and tendons/bone injuries (hard tissue).
Muscle Strains
Muscle strains are a tear in the muscle belly. While we get micro chairs every single time we train, a strain is a larger grade, and why you can’t see it, it’s actually bleeding a little bit just like you would if you cut your skin, This is also why they are typically accompanied by inflammation in the area of the injury.
To understand how they happen, you have to understand what happens when we train. Every time we train, we damage our muscle fiber. Minor damage is a good thing because our body uses this to build back stronger by essentially filling in the gaps. This type of minor damage heals in 24-72 hours.
The problem is when you over stress your tissue.
Over stressing your soft tissue does not result in better performance but results in large muscle belly tears that may never heal to their previous state.
Muscle belly tears do not heal quickly like micro tears and do not heal back stronger. Instead, you get scar tissue that will likley never return to healthy tissue.
If you want a better explanation of how this works, read this article on calf injuries. While not specifically about the healing process, the first few paragraphs go pretty far in depth. But, in summary, it’s like taking a sheet of paper and tearing just a quarter-inch of it as opposed to grabbing the thing and ripping it in half. That is at a low grade a muscle strain and/or pull and at a high grade a complete separation.
In a perfect world combined with a perfect training plan, you prevent this through the accumulation of small tears over time, which creates a stronger and stronger base.
These small tears let our bodies adapt progressively over time to the exact stimulus (running) that we put our body through.
But, we don’t live there and we don’t have that, even if we have a great coach.
In the real world, our bodies adapt to our specific running stride with very little deviation, and while the muscles involved get incredibly strong in those patterns, the surrounding muscles do not.
So, when we step on rocks, roll our ankles; jump over logs, stub our toe or have a rock in our shoe and then compensate the rest of the run, we are putting muscles that have not had the luxury of adapting over time and place them under a serious load.
And then, they break.
The reason this happens is weak un-adapted muscles.
By strength training these muscles in a controlled environment, we can make them ready to take on unforeseen and uncontrolled circumstances.
Strong muscles stop running injuries from occurring by making them capable of handling far greater loads than what they will encounter on the trails.
The same can apply to our hard tissues.
Tendons, Ligaments, And Bones
At this point, you might be wondering how this actually helps things like tendons and ligaments, and really, bones?!
When you strength train, you don’t just stress muscle tissue, you also stress tendons and ligaments. Over time, these get thicker and stronger.
Working much the same as the damage and recovery cycle of soft tissue (muscle), except they are harder to damage and take longer to heal. But, they too, on a micro-level, take damage and heal back stronger just like muscle tissue does.
Unless of course, we go back to our paper analogy.
This is why you can watch somebody on TV can squat 1,000 lb, while if you did it, you would literally tear your tendons in half.
That athlete, over an incredible amount of time, with an incredible amount of work, has built his tendons to be able to handle that workload.
As tendons and ligaments get stronger, along with their muscle counterparts, your body is more able to handle impacts, and cushion blows.
This is because our tendons in conjunction with our muscles act like incredibly strong rubber bands (tendons can support the weight of cars).
Every time the tendons stretch, they absorb energy and then release it allowing you to redirect the energy.
This stretch and release trick not only lets us conserve and direct more power, but gives a cushioning effect (like car suspension) to avoid the smashing of bones every time you stride.
I do put “incorrectly” because this is less of an issue if you have decent running form, but most of us have some kind of flaw in how we run.
Strength Training allows us to build up these tendons just like how we build up muscle tissue, slow and controlled over time. The question then comes down to, “How do we start?”
How To Start Strength Training To Stop Running Injuries
You start the same way as anyone who needs to get stronger. You don’t follow high rep bodybuilding programs, you’re not training for size. You follow a basic strength training program and make sure you do it correctly.
The main considerations come into applying proper recovery cycles between training sessions and ensuring you are eating enough protein and calories to make off for the additional work.
A basic plan can look something like this:
Monday
- Run*
* If doing a back-to-back run on the weekend this could be a rest day.
Tuesday
- Squat 3×5, 2 x 5, 3×3, 5×2, or 6 x 1
- Bench 3×5, 2 x 5, 3×3, 5×2, or 6 x 1
- Row 3×5, 2 x 5, 3×3, 5×2, or 6 x 1
- Assistant Work (Ex. Abs, calves, tibialis, plyometrics)
Wednesday
- Tempo Run
Thursday
- Rest Day or Recovery Run
Friday
- Squat 3×5, 2 x 5, 3×3, 5×2, or 6 x 1
- Press 3×5, 2 x 5, 3×3, 5×2, or 6 x 1
- Deadlift 3×5, 2 x 5, 3×3, 5×2, or 6 x 1
- Assistant Work (Ex. Abs, calves, tibialis, plyometrics)
Saturday
- Long Run
Sunday
- Rest Day or Recovery Run or back to Back-to-back run
Just make sure you progressively overload each session. Remember that more is not necessarily better.
If you need help finding a training program check this article out to help walk you through it:
Feel free to contact me with any questions or help.
Stop Running Injuries Through Strength Training
We covered quite a bit in this article, but we have just scratched the surface, but the bottom line is that you need to be strength training. Stronger muscles prevent the multitude of injuries that will come up in your running career, but they don’t have to. Don’t wait to start until you’ve already caused irreversible tissue damage. Start now and be a better runner, healthier person, and live a pain free life.
Until then, I hope to see you on the trails.
Keep that forge burning,
T
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