RUN CLUB BLOG: RUNNING MYTHS PART 2

Many people believe that running is the best way to lose fat and that strength training makes us bulky. At its core, the only way to lose fat is to be in a calorie deficit, where you expend more energy than you consume, and planned exercise typically only makes up 10% of our daily energy usage. Therefore, choose the exercise that you like to do and make sure that you are consistent with it, and don’t underestimate the power of being active outside of planned exercise such as walking, standing vs sitting desks and taking the stairs instead of the lift.

Research shows that stretching before a run doesn’t reduce our injury risk or loosen up tight muscles. Instead, utilising an active warm up helps increase our heart rate and body temperature, and gets the muscles warm which has a greater benefit to preparing us prior to going for a run. Ways to achieve this can be doing exercises such as body weight lunges, squats, and dynamic stretch’s such as leg swings. If you are doing interval training or sprinting, starting off with a few warm-up laps at a comfortable pace and gradually increasing the intensity to our maximum effort is essential.

This is a typical excuse for those who are worried about running, whether it be due to injury or the difficulty of the activity. Running is something that anyone can do (with exceptions due to injury/medical conditions/mobility impairments etc) and doesn’t have to be the scary endeavor it might seem. Going for a short jog around the block is still running and can help reduce the anxiety around running and allow it to feel more manageable and achievable. The risk associated with starting running is going from nothing to everything too quickly. If you are wanting to start running but don’t know how or where to begin, it is important to discuss this with your physio to ensure that you progressively build up your load to reduce injury risk and improve technique/economy.

A quote by runner and author John Bingham puts it best: “If you run, you are a runner. It doesn’t matter how fast or how far. It doesn’t matter if today is your first day or if you’ve been running for twenty years. There is no test to pass, no license to earn, no membership card to get. You just run.”

Join Hartwell Physio Run Club HERE.

Your local Camberwell Physio.