I will admit that I do not have much patience for injuries that keep me from doing things I enjoy. When I started running again after years off (roughly 20 years), running at first felt forced and uncomfortable, and I was sure I could make some adjustments to improve the experience. The way I saw it, to improve the experience of running and performance, a runner must become better conditioned AND more efficient biomechanically. You need strength and endurance, but also an economy of motion to conserve energy and avoid placing undue stress on muscles and joints.
Most runners pay a lot of attention to conditioning, but neglect biomechanics, and many of them end up with “overuse” injuries (I believe) as a result. As for me, I’m a mechanic; a technician. I like to figure out how things work, whether it’s my car or my body, and find ways to make them work better and more efficiently. Within a couple of months of my return to running, I made what I thought were great strides in my running and completed a couple of 5K races, finishing much better than I had anticipated. I thought, hey, I’m getting this running thing figured out, but that’s when the injuries started. First, I had to take a week off to soothe a strained popliteus muscle, and a month later I was sidelined by iliotibial band syndrome. read more…
Title: ChiRunning: Is it the answer?
Technorati Tags: biomechanics, ChiRunning, exercise, fitness, injury-prevention, running
