A buddy of mine just started a new site called dailystrength.org. It is a place where you can get support and advice for various problems or issues you may have in a multitude of areas of your life.
There was a post about running and knee problems, and how people were down on running and didn’t know how to solve those problems.
So I posted my 3 big solutions to my running problems, as the combination of these has basically kept me running injury free for about 2 years now. In addition to that, there are 2 more solutions which also contributed to my injury free state:
The big 3:
1. I use hard orthotics. Not the soft kind you find at a shoe store, but ones that are created from plaster molds of your feet. They basically remove any and all possibility of pronation and, thus, one source of strain to your knees and muscles.
2. I run using the Pose Method, which teaches running on the balls of your feet and definitely NO HEEL STRIKING. Running on the balls of your feet means that there is one extra joint to absorb impact and has been shown through some studies to reduce impact stress by as much as 50%.
3. Every week I go to get ART and Graston Technique. The two methods of massaging your muscles remove adhesions that form and build up over time. If they build up over time, then your muscles get less flexible and the possibility of injury increases as the muscles get tighter and tighter until all sorts of bad things happen.
The 2 other things are:
1. The old method of training meant beating up your body again and again until it breaks down to the point of injury. The new way has recognized that you don’t need to beat up your body as much as previously thought in order for peak performance. Your body needs rest and time to grow stronger. So no more overtraining leading to pain and injury!
2. Crossover training effects from swimming and cycling have immensely affected my running ability. It has also meant that I don’t need to break down my body by running alone in order to be at some high level of fitness. I can improve my abilities through other less impact activities and run faster.