Getting fit and fast requires the stress of training. That stress, or “overload,” is supplied by running faster or running longer, or both. In the simplest of terms, stress produces adaptation. A steady progression of training is usually enough to improve performance. Until it’s not.

The more trained the runner, the greater the stress required to eke out even small gains. To walk the tightrope between under and overtraining, training has to be a mixture of push and pull. Some days or weeks can be pushed, others pulled back for recovery.

When the usual steady slope of a training program isn’t getting results, or an athlete is ready for an added challenge, some coaches turn to a short-term, high-volume overload period. The training block, usually three days to three weeks in duration, can increase volume and/or intensity by 20 to 30 percent. Ideally, the tradeoff for that hard, long training and subsequent fatigue—when followed by a recovery or taper period—is supercompensation, a bounce back of fitness that boosts performance over and above what’s expected after normal training.

At least that’s the theory.

Overload training—inducing a state of heavy fatigue with weeks of die-hard training and minimal recovery—can result in something called “functional overreaching,” a state defined as a short-term decrease in performance with or without related symptoms of overtraining.

Of course, going out and running oneself into the ground doesn’t have to be a fancy scientific name. “Overload training isn’t anything new,” said Jim Vance, a triathlon coach and author of .Ěý“Athletes go flog themselves all the time.”

Much of the traditional overload training was conducted under the belief that overload training needs to achieve that overreached state to be useful. The verdict on that is both yes and no.

Overload Training: Proven to Work (With a Catch)

Research on short-term overload training shows that it works. One on triathletes found that athletes who completed a three-week period of overload training (30 percent greater than normal training load) had a 68 percent chance for a larger improvement in VO2 max than the group that just trained normally. In short, overload training was highly effective, for some.

But here’s the catch: The study further separated the runners into two groups, one that was merely acutely fatigued after the hard training and another that exhibited signs of overreaching (large decrease in performance, increase in fatigue). The significant (5 percent) performance improvement was only seen in the non-overreached athletes of the overload training group, those that didn’t exhibit the heavy fatigue. The only thing the overreached triathletes got in return for their three weeks of hard training was a much higher likelihood of an upper respiratory tract infection.

Another , published this February in the journal Sports Medicine,Ěýhad similar conclusions: Yes, the usefulness of overload training does seem to depend on the level of fatigue and performance after the overload block. But no, overloading to the level of overreaching actually dampened the potential gains of the training block. Too little fatigue wasn’t the problem but too much was.

RELATED: How Your Muscle Fibers Might Predict Overtraining

The article’s author, Phillip Bellinger, a researcher at Griffith University in Australia, concluded that, “in the studies that do report a performance super-compensation effect following functional overreaching, the magnitude of performance enhancement is no greater than that of athletes who completed the same relative increase in training load without experiencing a performance decrement.”

In other words, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence to suggest that inducing a state of soul-sapping, bone crushing fatigue is necessary to get a performance improvement. So, runners needn’t search for the level of overload training that produces profound physiological and psychological fatigue.

For runners looking for a way to bust through a plateau, high volume overload training can push performance to the next level. But, like a high-reward, volatile stock, playing the market with ultra-intense or extra-long workout periods can deplete reserves.

Walking the Line

Walking the line between functional and non-functional overreaching can take a little training finesse. Get it right and supercompensation is the reward. Tip the scales too far and it could take weeks or months to restore performance. That worst case comes with some mixture of reduced performance, disturbed sleep, reduced immunity, hormonal flux, and other negative consequences.

Given that overload training works but overreached does not, how does a runner avoid too much of a good thing?

Here’s how a sample of how overload training might work for you:

Beginner

Duration: 3 days

Plan: Add 20–30 percent to volume (mileage) of a 3-day block of training. Maintain the same intensity of training (don’t run faster and longer). This doesn’t have to be 3 consecutive days; since recovery days aren’t typically used as part of the overload schedule, keep them the same and add to the load days, spreading the increased volume over 4–5 days. Keep the usual recovery days and add to the volume load days. Many already follow a similar plan when scheduling longer runs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Intermediate

Duration: 7 days

Plan: Add 20–30 percent to volume (mileage) of a 7-day block of training. Maintain intensity and add the volume to non-recovery days. Don’t jump immediately to the heavier volume. For the first day or two of the overload block add 10–15 percent to the day’s mileage. For the remaining days of the overload block add the increased volume to the load days (not the recovery or interval training/track days).

Advanced

Duration: 10–14 days

Plan: Add 20–30 percent to volume (mileage) of a 10–14 day block of training. Maintain intensity. Don’t jump immediately to the heavier volume. For the first 3 days of the overload block add 10–15 percent to each day’s mileage. Similarly, for the remaining days of the overload block add the increased volume to the load days (not the recovery or interval training/track days).

Note: while Vance explains that overload can be applied with extra intensity or extra volume—but not both simultaneously—we’ve stuck with volume in these examples for simplicity.

Overload Training Rules

To avoid overreaching and injury, Vance believes that overload training can be successful when these rules are followed:

1) Do follow the “two-day rule.” Take two days easy after an overload block and then test your recovery with a harder workout. “After a heavy block of training, if a runner has two light days of recovery, the third day should be a home run,” Vance says.

2) Do take . Another staple of Vance’s overload training period is a mix of recovery and adaptation days intermixed into the high-volume days. “Every day doesn’t have to be hard, there still needs to be time to adapt and recover.”

3) Do try it if you have specific long-race goals. Overload training is suited for any athlete who has specific goals. Also, it’s best for athletes in longer duration events — half or full marathon. Athletes competing in shorter events don’t need as much high-volume training to improve performance.

4) Don’t increase volume (mileage) and intensity (speed) at the same time.

5) Don’t get too fatigued. Monitor fatigue (use the two day rule above) and avoid the point where recovery requires weeks not days.

6) Don’t attempt overload training if coming off of an injury.

Mind the Details

Bellinger says that a number of other factors, including nutrition, recovery, and stressors outside of training are also important for avoiding the negative aspects of overreaching. Increasing carbohydrate intake can help solve some of the training-induced fatigue while upping protein can prevent the increased likelihood of upper respiratory tract infection.

Though sleep is also impaired in athletes undertaking overload training, experts like Bellinger aren’t sure whether athletes who sleep poorly become overreached or whether overreaching/training causes impairments in sleep. Stressors outside of training also contribute to how an athlete may adapt to an overload training period.

Bellinger doesn’t believe that there is a specific percentage of training load increase that will work for every athlete. “I don’t think there is a golden rule with a given XX% of training load increase,” he says, “But I think standard monitoring tools, talking to athletes and weekly submaximal exercise tests to determine how an athlete is coping to the given training plan are effective ways to see how athletes are responding to training.”

As a simple means of monitoring for signs of overreaching, Bellinger recommends using a couple of aspects of heart rate.

One of the more straightforward metrics to monitor is heart rate during exercise. Overreached athletes can have a lower heart rate response to exercise, accompanied by an increase in fatigue. So, if you are feeling tired and your usual runs aren’t consistently resulting in the same heart rates (lower than normal), you might be close to overreaching.

He does note that similar heart rate responses are also seen in athletes who gain fitness—so context, the presence of greater than normal fatigue or lack of energy, is key.

In the case of overload training, trusting the process may not be enough. Monitoring the result is also critical in making sure the long, hard miles pay off in meaningful gains in fitness.

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Getting faster is hard work – long training runs; muscle searing track sessions; hill repeats – runners are used to enduring the fatigue and discomfort that come with a hard workout and most are willing to put up with the common aches and pains of an active lifestyle. But, sometimes that nagging discomfort gets worse after running on it.Ěý The deep aching pain of a stressed bone is unlike that of muscle soreness or fatigue and, as many have learned, running through the signs of an overloaded bone can lead to a stress fracture.Ěý

Simply put, bone is an active structure that responds to the stress placed on it. Microscopic damage created by the stress of running is usually quickly repaired, but in the case of stress fractures, repetitive trauma overwhelms the bone’s repair response, leading to a more serious injury.Ěý

Running makes bones stronger over time, but too much stress with too little time to recover can cause bones to fatigue and fail. Because of this, lower body stress fractures are a common injury among runners, representing 20% of all running related injuries.Ěý

Too Much, Too Soon

Sudden increases in mileage and volume are a leading cause of stress fractures, and a great deal of advice for the prevention of stress fractures is, rightfully, devoted to the external factors that can leave one susceptible to overuse injuries. However, intrinsic factors such as muscular strength and fatigue resistance can also play a big role in preventing the injury.Ěý

Dr. Jordan Metzl, author of The Exercise Cure, sums up the risk for stress fracture injury as the intersection of three circles; bone density; biomechanics; and training factors.Ěý “While training errors and bone health play a major role in risk, biomechanical problems can contribute significantly to the development of stress fractures,” Metzl says.ĚýĚý

Although traditional stress fracture recovery programs place an emphasis on rest and cross-training, recent recommendations from sports medicine researchers at the University of Washington focuses not only recovering from a stress fracture, but prevention of future stress injuries as well.

A comprehensive program to prevent or recover from a stress fracture injury should include the following elements:

1. Resistance Training

The evidence for the incorporation of into stress fracture rehabilitation programs begins with the observation that injured runners exhibit diminished leg muscle size and strength. For instance, female runners with stress fractures were found to have significantly lower levels of quad strength. Additionally, in a study of 136 military recruits, those with diminished knee extension strength had 5 times greater risk for stress fracture development.ĚýĚýĚý

Researchers hypothesize that lowered quad strength causes runners to adopt a straighter knee at heel strike, resulting in increased stress to the lower leg bones and raising the risk of stress fracture by a factor of 5.ĚýĚý

The calf muscles — the dominant muscle group during the push off portion of the running stride — can also influence the risk of a stress fracture injury. Because both an increase in bone strain and a decrease in calf muscle activity after prolonged running and marching, experts suggest that a strong calf can counter some of the tibial (shin) bone stress of running.

A 2009 research study from the University of Minnesota examined the size of runner’s calf muscles and lower leg bones to determine if a group of injured female runners were predisposed to stress fracture injury because of smaller bones.Ěý They were surprised to learn it was not the size of the lower leg bone that predisposed runners to injury, but rather the size of their calf muscles.Ěý Those with larger, and supposedly stronger calf muscles were less likely to suffer a stress fracture to the tibia, or lower leg.Ěý

2. Muscular Endurance Training

It may come as no surprise that tired muscles can’t provide the same support for tendons, ligaments and bones that fresh legs can. As one of the primary functions of muscle is the absorption of the impact of running, tired and fatigued muscles are less able to absorb that force, transmitting that stress to adjacent bone. Dr. Anthony Luke, director of the University of California, San Francisco’s emphasizes, “You can hear the difference in the foot strike of fatigued runners whose running technique has begun to break down” adding, “That louder sound is bones losing the protection of the shock-absorbing muscle.”ĚýĚý

Delaying the onset of muscular fatigue through the development of muscular endurance through the incorporation of high repetition, low load resistance exercise can lessen the chance of fatigue-related changes in a runner’s capacity to absorb impact with every stride.Ěý in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise observed a reduced tolerance for impact in runners whose lower leg muscles were fatigued.

3. Hip Stability Training

Pick up any fitness or running magazine and chances are you’ll read about the importance of hip strengthening.Ěý While it may not be a panacea, a stable and efficient hip is important for athletic performance by providing the foundation for the coordination and efficient movement of the legs.Ěý In a study focusing on female runners with a history of tibial stress fracture, researchers found that excessive inward motion of the knee and hip during the running gait was a predictor of tibial stress fracture. Strengthening the outer hip muscles (gluteus medius) can control these forces with running.

4. Gait Retraining

As stress fractures are thought to be related, in part, to the overall intensity of impact, changing a runner’s gait to reduce these forces has potential to lessen the chance of injury. Dr. Michael Fredericson, team physician for the Stanford University Cross Country team stresses, “Increasing muscle strength and endurance won’t have any effect on injury risk unless it is translated into improved running mechanics.”Ěý

A 2011 study in the journal Orthopedics and Biomechanics determined that a 15% increase in stride frequency lowered the overall impact of running in a group of recreational runners. more recent review article by Fredericson recommends a modest change in stride rate, stating, “increases of 10% or less above an athlete’s preferred (step) rate being adequate to reduce impact loading.”

While no one has directly studied the long term effects of changing gait on the incidence of stress fracture injuries, changing gait mechanics to encourage a greater turnover and reduce reaching forward with your stride offers promise for . Note, however, that adjusting cadence may reduce performance and efficiency — permanent, effective gait changes are best accomplished by with strategic mobility, strength and muscle activation work.

With the strong correlation of sudden changes in training to overuse injuries, smart training choices are a critical factor in avoiding stress fractures. However, you can further reduce your risk by following these straightforward, research – proven, preventative measures.

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Calf injuries don’t distinguish between victims. Consider David Habas. Habas, 56, has chronicled an impressive resume’ of endurance events during his athletic career.

A franchise operator from Lafayette, Cal., he has completed an Ironman triathlon, three marathons and ten half-marathons. But, despite his success in endurance sports, there is one thing that stands in his way of continued competition: injuries.

“It’s been frustrating, I’ve had to cut my running back a lot because of fears of re-injuring my calf,” Habas says. “If I keep my runs to below an hour, aggravation of the problem seems to be less likely.”

For many runners like Habas, the masters years are notable for an increase in the risk of injury. In a study of injury rates among runners, roughly half of master runners reported a running-related injury in the previous year, compared with only 45 percent of younger runners. Masters runners (30 percent) were also more likely to sustain multiple injuries compared to their younger counterparts (24 percent).

Strong Knees, Iffy Calves

While many automatically associate age and running with arthritis, those fears seem largely unfounded. In addition to research that shows the cumulative joint stress of running to be roughly equal to that of walking, a recent study found that the rate of arthritis among marathoners (9-percent) to be half that of the general population (18-percent).

“The thing that is important for Master runners, is that running seems to be protective for the cartilage, reducing the risk of knee arthritis and improving knee health,” says Rich Willy, a researcher and assistant professor at the University of Montana. But, while cartilage injuries are less of a concern, many older runners are plagued by recurrent muscle strains, especially to the calf muscles.

Muscle and tendon injuries can be a greater problem for older runners. Calf injuries in particular seem to be a male problem: a study of Masters runners reported that 70-percent of calf muscle injuries were to male runners, likely because men seem to experience more changes to muscles and tendons stiffness with aging than women.

Twitching Fast and Slow

The calf complex, sometimes referred to the as the triceps surae, is composed of two key muscles: the gastrocnemius, primarily fast twitch muscle fibers, and the soleus, a key muscle for running as it is composed of mostly slow twitch muscle fibers. Both attach to the heel bone via the common Achilles tendon.

The anatomy and fiber type of each of the two calf muscles contribute significantly to the manner in which the muscles are most commonly injured. The more powerful gastrocnemius muscle is most often injured during more quick or explosive movements — hence the sports medicine nickname “tennis leg” — with the knee straight and ankle flexed. An endurance muscle, soleus strains are more the result of overuse and repetitive stress and typically occur as a result of fatigue, uphill running or at the end of long runs.

“The calf strains occurred in both calf muscles at different times,” says Habas, “I first began experiencing calf strains in my mid 30’s and as my mileage increased, anything over 7 to 10 miles at a time, they became more frequent. After 40-years old the muscle strains became even more chronic.”

Losing Stiffness and Power

The reason behind the increase in calf injuries in older runners, says Willy, lies in age-associated changes to the muscles and tendons. “One big factor is that when we age, we lose collagen in our tendon structure, and that leads to a decrease in tendon stiffness,” says Willy. Ěý“We like to have stiff tendons because, like a spring, a stiffer tendon stores and releases energy better. So, when we have an Achilles tendon that goes through more elongation, that leads to more strain on the tendon and calf muscle, making someone more prone to Achilles tendinopathy and calf strains.”

Along with other important performance characteristics like aerobic capacity, muscle function — strength, mass, cross-sectional area, force production—is gradually lost with aging. Notably, the power of the calf muscles during running can get cut in half between the ages of 20 and 80. This loss of calf power is not balanced by any increase in power from the quads, glutes or hamstring.

“Aging leads to a muscle being less capable of creating force,” says Willy, “and the muscle can’t resist big stretches without causing injury.”

A weak calf muscle coupled with a floppy Achilles tendon then changes the springiness of the leg when running. From a performance standpoint, often overshadowed by the hip, quads and glutes, the calf muscles are arguably the most important leg muscles for runners. That importance makes the calf muscles all the more vulnerable to age-associated changes in function.

“I had numerous physical therapy sessions and also ART over the years,” relates Habas. “But it appeared that most of the cause was a lack of strength in both calf muscles. When I fell off on the strengthening is when the strains would reoccur.”

“You can get away with a loss in hip and quad strength,” emphasizes Willy, “Because you’re not putting those muscles under as big a demand when running. Aging doesn’t cause them to bump up to edge of muscle capacity as easily. However, with the large contribution of the calf to running, you bump up to edge of their capacity with the age-related loss of calf function. That’s why injuries manifest in the calf of masters runners.”

In addition to these physiological changes, one other factor, a decrease in stride length, plays a role in the altered biomechanics seen in Masters runners. In fact, research highlights a 13 percent reduction in step length between 20 and 60 years of age, with a 20 percent reduction in step length by 80 years old. Consequently, older runners, even when running at the same speed as a younger athlete, exhibit a 4 to 6-percent increase in stride frequency.

Resisting the Decline

In general, reversing or slowing down these changes, says Willy, is the key to reducing the risk of calf muscle injury or re-injury. Strong evidence indicates that heavy resistance training can increase both tendon stiffness and muscle strength. Lifting lower loads can also increase strength but have little effect on tendon stiffness.

How much is heavy? Use a weight that is 70-percent of the maximum you can lift one time, or a weight that can’t be lifted more than 10 repetitions. The load should be sufficient enough to cause fatigue by 6 to 10 repetitions.

Add weight to calf raises: Do both (for the gastrocnemius) and to target the soleus. Do three or four sets to fatigue (6–10 reps) of each exercise 2 to 3 days per week.

Plyometric training can also have a beneficial effect on tendon stiffness but might pose a greater risk of injury to the Masters runner. “It would be best to try 6 months of heavy strength training before trying to incorporate any plyometrics,” says Willy.

Because they lead to changes in leg stiffness, running on soft surfaces, like sand or trails, or wearing soft, cushioned shoes, often pushes muscles closer to the injury threshold. Harder running surfaces and a stiff shoe are the best bet for injury-prone calf muscles. Calf-shy masters also may not benefit from a lower drop, or flat, shoe as it shifts load to the calf and Achilles tendon. For those looking to prevent a calf injury, Willy recommends a higher drop shoe or heel lift until you have built the necessary strength and mobility.

Calf strains can be incredibly frustrating and limiting. The good news, however, is that they can be addressed with straightforward interventions and don’t require surgery or more extreme medical measures.

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Despite innovations in shoe cushioning, training and sports science, the rate of running injuries hasn’t budged since shoes were being made in waffle irons. One of the reasons for this unchanging rate is that each runner is their own laboratory, with a specific set of injury do’s and don’ts that depend on genetics, gender, lifestyle and a whole host of other factors.

Part of that runner-specific individuality is the speed you run and surfaces you choose. Some love trails and some pound the concrete in dense urban jungles. But what surface is best, and how fast should you run to stay healthy? The answer to those questions isn’t as obvious as one would think, largely due to the fact that many of the commonly held notions about the causes of running injury don’t actually make the scientific cut.

Softer Surface, Stiffer Leg

Take running surface, for instance. Though popular belief holds that running on trails or softer surfaces is easier on the joints, well-established scientific evidence says otherwise. It turns out that the brain has its own version of a car’s road sensing suspension — something termed “muscle tuning.” While running, the brain constantly anticipates the stiffness of the surface — using data from past experience and information from the previous stride — and “tunes” how strongly the leg muscles contract before the foot hits the ground.

So when the trail gets softer, the leg becomesĚýstiffer, leaving the net impact to the leg roughly the same. It’s how the body maintains the overall stiffness of the surface/shoe/leg combination and it’s the reason why running on softer surfaces doesn’t necessarily result in a lower rate of injury. The overall impact to the leg remains virtually the same whether running on trails, a beach or concrete.

But there’s an asterisk. “We know how the body adjusts to different surfaces in the short term, but what we don’t know are the long term consequences of running on a particular surface,” says Dr. Brian Heiderscheit, Director of the University of Wisconsin’s Runners’ Clinic.

Of course, the cushioning of the shoe impacts the equation as well, and could be part of the reason why ultra-cushioned shoes haven’t solved the injury conundrum. Just like a softer surface, the legs will adjust to a softer cushioned shoe by increasing leg stiffness. In fact, one of the few studies to evaluate shoe cushioning and impact forces found evidence to support the soft shoe, stiff landing theory.

A Spread of Surfaces

What about the treadmill? The dampened surface of a treadmill has long been believed to be beneficial to the joints. But impact represents only one of the stresses to the body with running; also important is the stress to soft tissue structures like tendons and muscles. An example of this is — though it imposes less impact to the joints, the muscles of the calf, hamstring and hip have to work harder, increasing the stress to the hamstring and Achilles tendons.

In fact, in a recent study comparing loads to the kneecap and Achilles tendon during treadmill and overground running, researchers found a 14ĚýpercentĚýgreater overall stress to the Achilles tendon as compared to overground running (load to the kneecap was roughly equal during both). While the results of the study shouldn’t spur wholesale abandonment of treadmills, it should serve as a note of caution for those that use them regularly, especially those with a history of Achilles injury.

To minimize the risk of injury, Heiderscheit believes that runners should vary running surface, much like they vary their training plans. “Just like a runner would try runs of different intensities—tempo and interval training for instance — my advice is to incorporate a little bit of all the different surfaces into training,” Heiderscheit says.

Speed: Stress or Smooth

Just as the finer points of running style and foot landing have been scrutinized by experts, so too has the question of optimal running speed. With the link of speed work to overuse injury, many would assume that running faster equals a greater risk of injury.

But, again, every runner is different, and slower may not always be better. “The majority of forces generally scale up with increasing speed, but running faster isn’t necessarily uniformly more demanding to the entire body,” says Heiderscheit. The structures that face the greatest increase in demand are the muscles and tendons tasked to supplying that extra speed—hamstrings, calf and glutes—with other structures realizing a less pronounced demand.

Several recent studies illustrate that point. A Ěýin the Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy sheds a little light on the role running speed plays in the amount of impact the knee experiences when running. Researchers from the Department of Public Health at Denmark’s Aarhus University asked a group of runners to run 1 kilometer at three different speeds: 5 mph, 7.3 mph and 9.8 mph.

Although the impact stress to the knee with every stride increased with fasterĚýrunning, the total stress to the knee was 30 percent less at the faster speed because of the lower number of strides needed to cover the same distance. On the basis of these findings, running longer distances at slower speeds, especially when fatigued, may contribute to overuse injuries of the knee.

Before you push the accelerator, consider again that injury risk can’t simply be boiled down to impact. Other research — conducted by the same Danish group and presented in Clinical Biomechanics — determined that the extra energy supplied by the muscles of the calf and foot with an increase in speed predisposes the Achilles and plantar fascia to injury.

The bottom line is: There isn’t one surface or speed that will take away running stress and reduce injury risk. ForĚýrunners looking to avoid injury, cross-training shouldn’t just involve the elliptical or bike, but also running on different surfaces and at varied speeds.

Updated from article that originally appeared April 2018.

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A running stride is as unique as a fingerprint. Many factors—running history, speed, leg length, leg alignment, and injury history—influence how you run. Consequently, the search for one unifying set of stride mechanics—one “ideal” running pattern to improve performance and reduce injury—is unrealistic.

That’s why blanket advice about foot strike, barefoot running, arch shape or shoe characteristics has limited effectiveness in reducing running injuries. There just isn’t a one size fits all fix. While you shouldn’t be told how you should run, there may be some value in being told how you shouldn’t.

Some runners actively try to lengthen their stride or over-stride in the belief that covering extra distance with each step will improve speed. That gait characteristic, the running equivalent of driving a car with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake, is increasingly being associated with excessive forces during running and injury.

When running, landing the foot in front of the body increases the peak braking force, a horizontal force that occurs opposite the direction of travel. According to , conducted by researchers from the University of British Columbia-Vancouver, runners with the highest values of peak braking force were eight times more likely to sustain a running-related injury.

But thankfully there appears to be a solution. The same group of UBC researchers, led by 2:33 marathoner and physical therapist Dr. Chris Napier, found that the braking force can be modified by increasing running cadence, or step rate.

In the experiment, a group of 12 female recreational runners with high peak braking forces (greater than 0.27 body weight) was selected for the intervention. Using a gait-training program with real-time biofeedback, the runners completed an 8-session gait retraining program while training for a half-marathon. The program focused on training the runners to shorten stride length and increase step frequency, while maintaining speed. Because speed is a product of stride length and stride frequency, increasing the number of strides per minute decreases stride length.

At the end of , by increasing step rate, the gait retraining program had reduced the peak braking force by an average of 15 percent. This matches findings from other research, specifically that increasing stride rate decreases the forces on the body when running. found that increasing step rate reduced the peak force on the kneecap by 14 percent. An important finding given that the most common site of injury is the knee, and kneecap pain the most frequent complaint.

Additionally, an increased cadence has also been shown to increase the firing of the gluteus medius, which may further reduce braking forces and the stress on the kneecap and lower leg.

One common fear of making changes in running mechanics is the fear that the changes will be hard to incorporate and will reduce efficiency and speed. Any change in mechanics, including step rate, can reduce running efficiency as it forces the brain and body to work a little harder.

Not in this case, says Napier. “Typically, when making any changes in how you run there is a period of decreased efficiency, but by the end of the study, the runners reported a lower perceived exertion when running at the same speed, indicating that the changes had become more natural and efficient.”

Jay Dicharry, a physical therapist and expert in running biomechanics, says changing step rate influences two aspects of running—injury and performance. “This stuff isn’t rocket science,” says Dicharry, “The vast majority of runners , and when you ask them to increase their cadence, you essentially ask them to take more shorter steps and decreasing the over-stride—both of which are tremendously helpful in decreasing the stress per stride.”

From a performance perspective, since it can significantly change stride length, Dicharry believes that taking a bunch of tiny strides isn’t the best strategy. “For the majority of runners what you want to do is shorten the over-stride and increase the push out the back side to preserve stride length.” Meaning that the goal of increasing stride rate is to train the runner to move the foot closer to the body, not to create a stride with an ungainly high turn-over rate or land on a particular part of the foot (forefoot/midfoot/rear foot).

Napier was able to identify which runners might benefit most from an intervention by determining peak braking force, a value difficult for the average runner to calculate. Without access to a running lab, he suggests using the sound of your running. If you’re audibly punishing the ground or treadmill and have a stride rate under 170 steps/minute, you are likely over-striding, perhaps necessitating a change in stride rate.

While over-striders have potentially the most to gain from a change in cadence, there is little downside. “Changing cadence is a pretty safe intervention, one that’s unlikely to cause a problem,” says Napier.

Don’t rely on any universal number, however. “Having any absolute value for stride rate is short-sighted—e.g. 180 steps/minute, a commonly quoted target rate—especially when it isn’t based on any empirical evidence,” says Napier.

When making a change in stride rate, he recommends that runners change no more than 5-10-percent (8-18 steps/minute).

In sum, taking a few more steps per minute can make your running healthier, and help re-program your stride so you brake less, become more efficient, and eventually run easier and faster.

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Endurance sports have a problem with overuse injuries. The stats are sobering: .ĚýMany of those will come asĚýa result of excessive and repetitive pressure on joints, muscles, ligaments, and tendons, according to a survey byĚýHarvard Medical School. TheseĚýinjuries can sideline athletes for months on end, and permanently impact their capacity to perform.Ěý

You’ll never be totally safeguarded from possible injury; but you can take some preemptive action that might make falling victim to overuse far less likely, and develop an eye for warning signs to catch them early before they become a real problem. Follow these guidelines to make sure you’re doing all that you can to protect yourself.

#1. Always Be MovingĚý

Though overuse injuries may appear suddenly, they’re actually a result of strain or stress building up over the course of days or even weeks. This accumulation of micro-traumas doesn’t just happen during exercise. Things like sitting at a desk all day or commuting long hours in a car can contribute to burgeoning back, neck, and hip injuries.

“We adapt to what we do,” says Jay Dicharry, a based in Bend, Oregon.Ěý“And our lifestyle is constantly trainingĚýour bodies, sometimes for the worse.” To avoid the repetition that leads to overworked muscles and joints,Ěýincorporate a bunch of different movements into your day. Sit, stand, walk, stretch—whatever you do, just move regularly.Ěý

#2. Strength Train Year-Round

Despite a significant uptickĚýin endurance athletes who swear by their strength work, some people still believe that their weightlifting should halt once they enter their competitive season.ĚýThat’s not the case. A found that when elite cyclists stopped their strength training program for the first eight weeks of a competition period, their performance declined.ĚýWhat's more, Reed Ferber, an assistant professor of kinesiology and head of the , says that his clinic it sees through a strength routine focused on building muscle and mobility in the hips.Ěý

The key is to keep up the strength work, but to stop doing it 72 hours before a race to allow the muscles time to fully recover, Dicharry says. It’s a strategy echoed by Michael Fredericson, musculoskeletal physiatrist and director of the . “Strength training should evolve over a competitive season but not stop,” he says. “Closer to competition, athletes should decrease the number of sets and reps, thinking less about endurance and more about explosiveness.”

#3. Fix Your Gait

A tell-tale sign of an overuse injuryĚýis a change in stride—some part of your body can no longer do what you're asking it to do, so a different part picks up the slack, creating a limp.Ěý

For example, those with ankle or Achilles pain often don’t use their calf to push the heel off the ground when running. That type of compensation can both reinforce muscle weakness and joint stiffness and create problems elsewhere, as other parts of the body are repeatedly asked to do a greater share of the work. It’s one reason why the leading risk factor for these conditions is previous injury.Ěý

The only way to fixĚýthe issue is to re-train your body to execute the movement, specifically targeting the flaws in form. Even if you don’t have access to a biomechanics lab,Ěýapps like and offer smart phone camera-based gait analysis. They’re designed to capture irregular movements and more severe imbalances, and provideĚýrecommendations and exercises on how to correct the problems.

#4. Focus on the Whole Body

The posterior chain—mainly your glutes, hamstrings, and lower back—has gained a reputation as the oft-neglected muscle group that’s responsible for many problemsĚýin the lower half of the body such as IT band, achilles, and knee or hip issues. While that’s true, putting in extra work to strengthen only your backside neglects other muscles groups like the quad, creating more imbalances. Strengthening your entire body is important for both treating and preventing injury, says Fredericson.Ěý

#5. Rest the Right Way

Barring an acute injury or surgery, total rest—a sequence of days without any physical activity—won’t do you any favors, says Fredericson. On the other hand, relative rest—trading in your usual sport for cross-training or light activity—allows yourĚýbody to restore hard-workingĚýmuscles and jointsĚýwithout going totally dormant.Ěý

While you should give stressed joints, tendons, and muscles the time to heal, it’s equally important to useĚýthe help of a PT or orthopedic doctor to correct the strength, mobility, and mechanical issues that caused the injury in the first place.ĚýOtherwise, those same problems might re-appear after a rest period. Ěý

#6. Eat Enough Calories

The Ěýof low bodyweight, low bone density, and hormonal imbalanceĚýimpacts as many as 60 percent of female exercisers every year. In the case of the Stanford cross-country team, 38 percent of female runners developed stress fractures over a three-year period because of the problem, says Fredericson. But the issue doesn’t stop with women. Fredericson and other researchers have discovered many of the same imbalancesĚýin —inadequate nutrition, low testosterone, and low bone density. All of these factorsĚýgreatly increase the risk of injury.

When your body isn’t getting enough calories, it stops producing normal levels of testosterone and estrogen, leading to hormonal dysfunction. Because your growth hormone levels goĚýdown, muscle mass decreases, which in turn lowers the metabolism and leads to lower bone density. That combined with the pounding that comes from high levels of activity can result in a stress fracture, a problem that takes months to heal.

Fredericson’s research explores how a change in diet can greatly alleviate these risk factors. Put simply: endurance athletes need to eat more calories. Focus on eating a balanced diet and listening to your body’s hunger cues, especially on days where you're working extra hard. If you struggle to know what that looks like, reach out to a sports nutritionist to help you develop a sound strategy.

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Training for endurance sports can, at times, feel like a never-ending arms race. Though many (rightly) focus on achieving big performance gains by training harder and smarter, those improvements become smaller and more difficultĚýto obtain after a while. Since your fellow competitors are likely running similarĚýintervals and lifting similarĚýweights, maximizing endurance performance can often come down to scrutinizing the details.Ěý

Gwen Jorgensen, recent winner of the United States’s first triathlon gold at the Rio Olympics, believes that many of these smallĚýgains are found outside of aerobic training. “Triathlon is challenging because you are always balancing three different disciplines. I have learned to search for marginal gains, andĚýalways adapt to changing situations,” she says.

The theory:Ěýto compete at the highest level, every aspect of performance should be examined in microscopic detail for possible improvement. The collective performance benefits of the slightĚýchanges to training, nutrition, and recovery can give an athlete a small but significant edge over the competition—especially at the elite level.

“If it has the potential to impact performance in either a positive or negative fashion, then we try to take care of it,” says Jonathan Hall, high performance director for Triathlon Canada. “Attention to detail has certainly become a topic of interest and every good organization is looking to innovate and identify and implement any item that may increase performance or the likelihood of achieving an outcome.”

Here are some small changes that you can make in your life whose sum could make a real difference in performance.

Don’t Stretch

The pre-exercise commandment taught to you in gym class needs an update. It turns out the traditional stretch-and-hold movement known as static stretching decreases both muscular power and efficiency, notably in one’s vertical jump and sprint speed. that static stretching before cycling decreased time-to-exhaustion by 26 percent and increased average oxygen consumption by fourĚýpercent, meaning the subjects reached fatigue faster and had to work harder to maintain the same speed. Static stretching also seems to have little effect on the risk of injury.Ěý

that dynamic stretching, or stretching while moving (e.g. wide walking lunges or leg swings), does not have the same pre-performance downside and can actually augment a warm-up.

Prioritize Sleep

For general health and well-being, the National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults get seven-to-nineĚýhours of sleep a night. But in aĚý of Stanford basketball players, researcher Cheri Mah found that five-to-sevenĚýweeks of sleep extension—that is, going to bed earlier and/or getting up later—resulted in improvedĚýbasketball performance, reaction time, and running speed. The researchersĚýconcluded, “Extended sleep beyond one's habitual nightly sleep likely contributes to improved athletic performance.” Ěý

As it’s often easier to alter your bedtime than wake-up time, to get more sleep, try gradually going to bed earlier—15 to 30 minutes earlier is a good starting point. (Of course, for many adults, sleep extension may be an unrealistic luxury—in its place, simply try to sleep better.)

An Advil a Day Keeps Peak Performance Away

Endurance athletes are notorious for popping Advil and Tylenol like monochromatic M&M’s. However, that anti-inflammatory medicines taken immediately after exercise blunt the body’s natural response to physical stress, which is necessary for positive adaptations to occur. This suggests that even if taking an anti-inflammatory gets you past the aches and pains of training and racing, it may be doing damage to your fitness. In fact, in a 2007 study following several groups of Western States ultrarunners, researchers found that those using anti-inflammatories following the race experienced higher levels of post-race inflammation and were just as sore in the week following the race as those who didn’t take any.

Dial Up the Compression

First used as a medical intervention to promote blood flow to the heart, compression garments have been adopted by the endurance community over the last decade as a recovery device. Though compression seems to have no effect on actual speed, that the garments elicitĚýa small positive responseĚýon exercise time to exhaustion, running economy, perceived exertion, clearance of blood lactate,Ěýand markers of muscle damage and inflammation.

UseĚýthe Chocolate Milk Recovery Principle

Replacing proteins and carbohydrates during the first hours after exercise is a critical component of the recovery process. And combining them in a three-to-oneĚýratio—similar to that found in chocolate milk—seems to be ideal. , cyclists whoĚýfollowed up several hours of exhaustive exercise with a three-to-one carb-to-protein recovery drink performed better in the next day’s time trial than those that recovered with only carbs. Ěý

Blow Off Some Steam (and Run Faster)

Many enjoy the therapeutic effects of a steam shower after a hard workout, but it may actually offer more than just relaxation. While sauna time can have a variety of positive influences on the body— and an —its greatest effect on performance may be its ability to boost the volume of one’s plasma, or the fluid that surrounds the red blood cells and is key in heat adaptation. , published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, found that an increase in plasma volume after the use of a sauna was responsible for a 32 percent increase in run time to exhaustion and a two percent enhancement in a 15-minute endurance time trial performed in the heat. While sport scientists aren’t clear about what the ideal sauna protocol looks like, successful research protocols have consisted of a 30 minute post-training steam four days a week for three weeks.Ěý

Time Your Carbs Right

Scientists have long known that reducing carbohydrate intake can train the body to more optimally use and store carbs. Unfortunately, training on a low-carb diet often feels like one giant bonk. In order to better understand how one can strategically use carbs while adapting their body to fat, researchers from France and Australia had a group of runners follow a protocol that had them fuel up on carbs immediately before high intensity workout sessions and then restrict their carbs for the rest of the day. The study, which was published in April in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, then had the runners start the next day with a low carb breakfast and a moderate intensity workout (requiring less carbs). They repeated this seven-day cycle three times. Over the course of this three week intervention, researchers found that these runners not only increased their running economy, but they were also able to improve their 10KĚýtime by an average of 73 seconds. The researchers hypothesize that the high carb availability sessions gave the runners fuel for high quality workouts, while the low carb availability at night led the body to begin using fat as fuel.

A Little Mist Goes a Long Way

the use of cold-water immersion to minimize heat stress before exercise in a hot environment, but it isn’t always convenient (or comfortable) to plunk into a cold bath minutes before a race. Recent research may have come up with a more palatable alternative—spritzing oneself in the face with cool water. comparing cold-water immersion and cooling facial spray on 5KĚýrunning performance in the heat, both cooling strategies improved runner’s times by approximately 30 seconds. Importantly, both cold water immersion and the spray reduced the sensation of the hot environment. A similar effect—without the need to carry a personal face mister—could likely be achieved by using a water bottle.

For Recovery, Try a Little Tart Cherry

The after effects of intense exercise can mimic that of illness or more serious cardiac events, including muscle damage, inflammation, and stress. The use of anti-oxidants after exercise has been somewhat successful in reducing this stress and more recent research has focused on foods containing the natural anti-oxidant polyphenol, particularly the skins of tart cherries. in the sevenĚýdays leading up to a half-marathon time trial averaged 13 percent faster race finish times when compared to a group that took a rice flour placebo. Additionally, the supplement seemed to enhance measures of recovery, including reduced immune and inflammatory stress. Inflammatory markers—assessed using blood tests after the race—were almost 50 percent less in the tart cherry group of runners.Ěý

Track Your Way to Recovery

When it comes to training, there’s a fine line between too much and not enough. A determined that measuring one’s heart rate variability allowed a group of runners to better individualize the timing of their high-intensity training runs, leading to greater improvements in performance. After assessing HRV prior to exercise sessions, the athletes would only perform high-intensity workouts if HRV-values were in a narrow, idealĚýwindow. Using this individualized training, the HRV group improved performance in a 3,000Ěýmeter time trial by three percent compared to a group that followed a standardized pre-determined training program. Interestingly, the greater improvement in running performance found in the HRV group was achieved with a lower number of moderate and high-intensity training sessions, and a higher number of low-intensity workouts, reinforcing that harder is not always better.

Compliment Yourself

A developing theory, supported by a growing number of research studies, suggests that fatigue may be as much psychological as it is physiological. The theory holds that the brain, using input from the body, decides when enough is enough. If this is true, convincingĚýyour brain that it’s okay to go harder and longer can be an important skill for those looking to improve performance. In a 2013 study, published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, researchers evaluated the effectiveness of positive self-talkĚýon feelings and performance. After the two-week study period, the group that used positive self-talk training was able to cycle 18 percentĚýlonger (almost twoĚýminutes) during an exercise test to exhaustion than a group that simply prepared with a standard exercise program.

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If you’ve ever experienced that sensation of powering up the last hill of a long run— when your legs feel like cement and your lungs are heaving, you’ve probably wondered how much your body can actually take. Could you dig deeper, even when your legs are telling you to stop?

Your own stopping point may have as much to do with your tolerance for suffering as physiological strength. We are accustomed to thinking that our limits are physical and that the way to get stronger is by pushing harder and going longer. But the brain’s tolerance for pain may play a significant role in how far one can push into that dark place.

is a professor of exercise science at the University of Kent. He believes that pain tolerance may be the key to performance. “My latest research suggests that a participant’s tolerance of exercise-induced pain can be used to predict their endurance performance,” Mauger says.

But pain tolerance isn’t necessarily just something you’re born with. Mauger believes that, like aerobic capacity or lactate threshold, tolerance is malleable.Ěý“For training, I think feeling pain is part-and-parcel of this, and learning to tolerate pain in training means you will likely deal with it better when it counts during competition.” Mauger is even looking into whether additional performance gains can be made by adding additional levels of pain training, a sort of HIIT for suffering.

Exercise related discomfort is part of endurance sports. But it’s the management of that discomfort that separates individuals. A of Olympic cyclists, presented in the Journal of Sport Behavior, concluded that, “there is one element that all athletes who wish to excel must confront…exertion pain.” In the study, those surveyed didn’t speak of not suffering but rather of managing it, using mental strategies to cope with the suffering.Ěý

How? They talked themselves out of it.Ěý

To lessen the agony of exertion, the techniques the cyclists used included goal setting, imagery, and positive self-talk.Ěý Feeling prepared for a race or completion also seemed to minimize the feeling of pain.Ěý

While pain may not be a one-way ticket to athletic greatness, tolerance for physical discomfort may allow endurance athletes to fully tap their potential.Ěý

Everybody hurts, so increasing your threshold may not move you from back of the pack to podium – that may have to do more with training and genetics – but it might move you up a few places.ĚýĚý

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This year, for the first time, the Ěýreleased a gender breakdown of PED violations. According to the data, more than four times as many male athletes tested positive for PED than female athletes. But this number seems to suggest that women are far less likely to turn to performance enhancing drugs, which may not be the whole story.Ěý

Measured against relative performances gains, there is actually little basis for the argument that women are less likely to use PEDs. Because women have lower baseline levels, they often benefit more from small doses of steroids, which gives them a greater boost in performance. “For females, the effects of anabolic steroids are greater, and the old files of the German Democratic Republic have shown that their official doping plan targeted females, as those effects had more impact than they did on their male counterparts,” says Olivier de Hon, scientific expert at the Anti-Doping Authority of The Netherlands.

Instead, the differentiation may come down to a flaw in the testing pool.ĚýWADA technical documents specifically outline the selection of athletes for testing using, “an all inclusive assessment of risk of a sport or discipline in relation to doping that considers a wide range of risk factors in addition to physiological risk. Such factors may include doping history, financial gain, gender, age, status of the sport within a country, etc.” In other words, testing is focused on those athletes that are deemed statistically more likely to dope. Under this formula, female athletes have been labeled as lower risk, meaning they aren’t tested as often as men, explains Daniel Eichner, president of the , a WADA accredited lab.ĚýWhen asked to comment, a WADA representativeĚýofferedĚýonly:Ěý“Our statistics do not identify tests by male and female athletes.”Ěý

Of course, news that female athletes are doping isn’t a surprise. Just as the IAAF documents indicate that doping among World Championship and Olympic track and field athletes is far more widespread than previously thought, recent high profile positive tests—includingĚýthree-time Chicago Marathon championĚýĚýand three-time Boston Marathon winnerĚý—suggest that female athletes may beĚýdoping at similar rates to their male counterparts.Ěý

“We know that the win-at-all-costs culture exists in all sports, at all levels, and that the temptation to use performance-enhancing drugs to cheat your competitor isn’t limited by gender,” says Annie Skinner, a spokeswoman for the United States Anti-Doping Association. Which means that as long as there is a desire to win, doping will be continue to be a problemĚýamong both men and women.Ěý

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Symmetry, or so we are told by science, underlies our appreciation of beauty. But what makes for beautiful—and injury-free—running?

A lack of symmetry, that is relative differences in muscle strength, motion, flexibility, balance, and mechanics between sides of the body, is one element often highlighted as a risk factor for injury. However, while it’s easy to find asymmetry in all of us—small variances in leg length, scoliosis or ankle flexibility to name a few—it’s much more challenging to determine cause and effect.

This inherent asymmetry present in every runner makes achieving complete symmetry impossible and unrealistic. Dr. Irene Davis, Director of the National Running Center at Harvard, believes that it isn’t a question of whether or not asymmetry exists, but rather how much of it. “What we don’t know is how much asymmetry is normal and how much we can tolerate before it becomes a problem.”

But how hard should runners work to achieve symmetry? Do differences in strength, flexibility and gait biomechanics on one side of the body lead to injury and diminished performance?

Jay Dicharry, a renowned physical therapist, running biomechanics expert and author of Anatomy For Runners, is adamant in support of the need for symmetry. “Running requires mobility, stability, strength, and power. While how much is enough depends on theĚýindividual, I strive to have all my athletes within 5 percent in terms of symmetry across the board.”

Dicharry believes that while it’s not as simple as asymmetry equals injury, it does lead to problems in the gait mechanics of running, which can then lead to injury. To make matters more confusing those asymmetry-related problems might even manifest on the other side of the body. “Sometimes it’s a runner’s poor right hip stability that allows their knee to rotate excessively, and that drives their chronic right knee pain. But other times, their poor right hip stability may introduce an imbalance that actually winds up in a limp and thus stressing the other leg, causing symptoms in the left side.”

But according to Dicharry, as a degree of leg dominance or asymmetry is expected, it’s difficult to pinpoint the degree of asymmetry that begins to influence the risk of injury. “Now, if you tend to be more dominant with accuracy—imagine kicking a soccer ball more accurately with your right leg—that’s OK,” Dicharry explains. “Dominance in terms of controlling your body is different. That has to do with fine motor coordination, not the ability to produce raw force and power to run symmetrically.”

But are absolute levels of strength, flexibility and mechanics more important or those relative to the other side? According to Davis, the answer may be both. “It is the degree to which strength is compromised or the degree of asymmetry that exists in either the musculoskeletal or biomechanical factors.” For instance, if both hip muscles are weak but symmetrical, there is still a problem.

Research from Davis’ lab, presented in the Journal of Biomechanics, compared gait asymmetry in female runners who had never sustained a running-related injury to those with a history of lower leg stress fractures. The study found a similar degree of asymmetry in both groups, but discovered higher impact values in both legs of the injured subjects, suggesting that the magnitude of impact stress put them at greatest risk rather than any asymmetry. The researchers concluded that asymmetry might simply influence the side on which they become injured.

An article in this month’s American Journal of Sports Medicine studied female runners experiencing mild kneecap pain and found comparable results; knee pain didn’t appear to be significantly associated with any asymmetry in hip strength.

Similarly, in the sports science literature, the role of symmetry in running performance is unclear. Glimpses into the role symmetry plays in performance came in a study showing that the degree of structural knee symmetry at 8 years old predicted sprint running performance at 20.

Though we can’t pick our parents—or our knee structure—we can control some of the other physical variables. If running faster and longer is your goal, Dicharry has this to say about the impact of symmetry on performance: “I don’t advocate running on one leg, you have two of them for a reason.”

So knowing that it’s not a question of whether or not asymmetry is present but rather how much, how do runners detect and fix asymmetry?

Dicharry believes that you don’t have to go hunting for special exercises to fix asymmetry; you just have to pay attention to your body. “Essentially, it’s not the exercise you are doing, but rather the quality you feel when doing single-leg or single-sided exercises. Drop the weight, slow down, do whatever it takes to help you feel symmetric.”

Simple observations, like an inability to twist as far to one side well or good balance on one side but not the other, can indicate an asymmetry that needs to be addressed.

It’s clear that while every runner has asymmetries, ignoring the more obvious differences may be a recipe for injury. “It’s not OK to simply take note of these differences,” Dicharry stresses. “Runners should take time to improve them if they hope to influence injury risk and performance.”

Jay Dicharry’s Single-Leg Balance Asymmetry Test

Found in:ĚýAnatomy for Runners: Unlocking Your Athletic Potential for Health, Speed, and Injury Prevention

—Stand on one leg for 30 sec; repeat on the other side. Then repeat with eyes closed.

Runners can assess a great deal of symmetry on their own, and adding vision helps more. If you can, have a buddy video the test. Some things you can feel right away but some may be more apparent when you watch the video playback. If you’ve got an issue with stability on one leg, take some time to work on it. You can get a huge improvement in balance just by spending time on your less-stable leg throughout the day.

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