The majority of people start running to get fit….And often people get hurt in very short time. Well, here is the unwanted truth.

“You have to be fit to make running safe and beneficial for you”.

When you run, your body has to absorb forces which exceed two and half of our body weight, and often times even more.

So if you weight 60kg, your body needs to cope with 150kg+/leg/step. On 5km distance, considering average stride length 1.5m, you step roughly 1600 times on each leg. That’s massive 240,000kg absorbed by each leg.

The question is then.  Do you really think you are strong enough???

Yep, exactly.  The main reason why you got hurt while running is simply that you are not strong enough.

Of course you can argue….I have to have great amount of cardio vascular endurance and weight training builds muscles which make it harder ……. I hear you, however, if there isn’t a good strength foundation, there cannot be any level of muscular endurance.

Just think about the injuries that runners sustain – they are not cardiovascular injuries, they are muscular injuries. Injuries happen at the weakest link in the chain, so if the muscular system is the weak link …….Injuries occur.

Some runners include weight training into their routine, unfortunately, if they go into the weight room they often do sets of 12-15 or more to work on “endurance”.  They might then throw in some crunches to hit the core, but it is very poor supplementary work.

To get strong you have to lift heavy for lower amount of repetitions.  We are talking about 75-95% of your maximum.

Our standard is that runners at minimum Deadlift 1.25 – 1.5x their  body weight and Squat 0.75 – 1.0x their body weight . Surprisingly, as their deadlift numbers rise so does their performance. We’d also like them to be able to do a pull up or 2!!

Before you have endurance, you have to have the strength to endure.

SAFE & HAPPY RUNNING!