Is there a way to keep running that doesn’t break your body down?

Question

Drew Wartenburg · Answer

Is there a way to keep running that doesn't break your body down? I guess there are two different ways that I would answer this question. The first is to say that there are certainly ways that you can safely run without causing injury to your body or without causing undue wear and tear, which is something you want to stay away from. The very nature of training, the stress applied, the load that your body is assuming under that stress is going to cause breakdown. That is actually one of the goals of training, is to stress, then recover through rest, and then stress again. It's sort of a basic training principle. So I think balancing the level of stress is the key to healthy running. And what you'll find as your training age progresses, which is not your actual chronological age, your training age is the amount of time that you've been engaged in a particular athletic pursuit. So as your training age progresses, you're going to become, ideally, you're going to become more resilient, better at running, better at tolerating a higher load. But this is a process that takes time, and especially if you're working with a coach or have a solid training program, that's going to progress over time as you get better. So I think progressing to a point of injury is always something we want to avoid. Balancing the body enough that you can make gains and adapt is actually a goal that you should be shooting for.

Kate Edwards, PT, DPT, OCS · Answer

Hey, Bill. This is Kate Edwards and this is a great question. The question is, is there a way to keep running that doesn't break your body down? And I think there absolutely is. So when we think about running, we have to think more than physical. We have to think about our mental health, our emotional health, and our physical health. So a lot of the stuff that I do and I work with and the companies that I have built have to do with making sure that runners address all these pieces. So if you are taking care of your mental health, so perhaps talking to a sports psychologist or doing meditation or breath work in addition to your other things, and if you're doing strength training or mobility and yoga, that type of thing, that could be really, really helpful as well. So it's about maybe not doing as much running volume, running smarter, not more, is really the key and making sure you address your whole health.

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"Is there a way to keep running that doesn’t break your body down?"