It’s June, summer is here! We made it! Though today is a little cool, we are headed into some warmer weather and more outdoor activity. I have a 3 year old that doesn’t let us stay inside and I gotta say that it feels great to be outside more. Not only am I getting nice amounts of Vitamin D (you get all the vitamin D you need in only about 10-15 minutes of daily sun time this time of year) and fresh air, but we’re also getting exercise. I think our Little Q might be a cross county star for as much as she likes to run. When we suggest she practice riding her bike, she will do so for a minute then strip the helmet off and say ‘let’s run!’ So, my husband and I are off at a slow jog behind her as we run around the neighborhood – she’s going to get us in shape. I think we’re setting in some great lifelong habits here (or she’s getting us in the habit of running again, I’m not sure exactly).
So, if you’d like to get started running, I’ll give a couple quick pointers to avoid injury or prevent one from getting worse. First, there is a technique to running. I am a proponent of a mid-foot strike. Heel striking leads to all kinds of injuries; if you can forefoot run without forcing anything, that’s great. A discussion of the mid-foot strike is longer than the length of this newsletter, so I won’t get into it here. Feel free to ask at your next appointment and you can watch some videos on YouTube about it as well.
Second, shoes do matter. I talk about minimal shoes a lot – this type of shoe is great for most of us, but some people don’t do well with a minimal shoe. To find out how your shoe ranks, you can visit the Minimalist Index on The Running Clinic’s website. I’m a huge fan of my Xero shoes for casual walking and workouts, though I’ve not attempted anything longer than a 1/2 mile run in them yet. My running shoe is a very lightweight shoe, however, and is about an 85% according to the Minimalist Index.
The final point I’ll mention is that most injuries (regardless of the sport or activity) come from a ‘too much, too soon’ kind of thing. The body runs on a principle of adaptation – our body is great at adapting to various stressors if given ample opportunity to do so. So, if I go slowly and start by running only a short time or distance (say 8-10 minutes or a half mile) and slowly increase the time/distance over the next several weeks, I’m giving my body enough time to adapt to my running volume. On the other hand, let’s say I had a total of 10 miles in one week, then do 20 miles the next, I shouldn’t be surprised if things start to hurt. It may not seem like a huge jump, but I doubled my running volume from one week to the next, which is not a lot of time for my body to adapt. One other point that goes along with this too…listen to your body. If you’re running (or doing any activity) through pain, there’s a problem there. I tell people to keep their pain levels below a 2 or 3 out of 10, regardless of the activity.

Good luck running, and please let us know if you have any questions! We’d be happy to help you out!

I want to talk about a couple things happening in June and this summer at BodyWorks: