{"id":34608,"date":"2011-06-29T10:25:12","date_gmt":"2011-06-29T10:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nomeatathlete.s1.cdadev.com\/?page_id=34608"},"modified":"2020-02-03T14:55:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T19:55:52","slug":"injury-proof-your-running-stride","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/injury-proof-your-running-stride\/","title":{"rendered":"The Simple Way to Injury-Proof Your Stride (for Good!)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">The Simple Way to Injury-Proof Your Stride (for Good!)<\/h1>\n<p>Lots of people will tell you that running, by nature, is hard on the body.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll say that running 13.1 or 26.2 miles &#8220;isn&#8217;t natural,&#8221; and that &#8220;we&#8217;re just not meant to run that far.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But guess what? This is total B.S.!<\/p>\n<p>New theories about early humans (brought to light in Christopher McDougall&#8217;s <em>Born to Run<\/em>) suggest the exact opposite &#8212; that humans&#8217; ability to run longer than about 10 kilometers at a time (which most animals cannot) was a huge advantage in the early days of our species.<\/p>\n<p>But if that&#8217;s true, and we really are &#8220;meant&#8221; to run long distances, then how can you make sure that you don&#8217;t end up with knee pain, hip pain, and the other problems that affect so many runners?<\/p>\n<h3>How you can run relaxed and pain-free<\/h3>\n<p>For a long time, I was one of those runners.\u00a0 When I first started running and jumped right into marathon training, I constantly battled shin splints and even stress fractures &#8212; so much that several physical therapists gave me the old, &#8220;You know, maybe you&#8217;re just not meant to run marathons&#8221; line.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, I was stubborn.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/running-shin-pain\/\">I tried everything<\/a> to figure out how I could run without pain, and lots of things seemed to help a little bit.<\/p>\n<p>But among everything I tried, a single technique stood out. And more than any other, I credit this trick with injury-proofing my stride for good, and allowing me now to run not just one, but many marathons and ultramarathons each year, and almost entirely without injuries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"notice\" style=\"text-align: center;\">That simple trick is to take 180 steps per minute while you run.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve never thought about your stride rate before, chances are you&#8217;re doing <em>way<\/em> less than that.\u00a0 But 180 (or more) is how many steps the most efficient runners in the world take each minute, and it&#8217;s not hard to see why.<\/p>\n<p>When you turn your legs over at this rate, you:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Are forced to take shorter, lighter strides<\/li>\n<li>Keep your feet underneath you, rather than way out in front<\/li>\n<li>Strike the ground with your midfoot, rather than your heel<\/li>\n<li>Spend more time in the air and less time &#8220;braking&#8221; on the ground<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All these factors add up to two big things: Greater efficiency, and dramatically reduced risk of injury.<\/p>\n<h3>How to do it<\/h3>\n<p>Now, if you haven&#8217;t ever tried it, running this way is going to feel weird at first.\u00a0 Especially when you&#8217;re running slowly, it&#8217;s going to feel as if you&#8217;re spinning your wheels, moving your legs very quickly but not going anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s okay.\u00a0 These quicker, shorter strides will force you to use a whole new set of muscles, so it&#8217;s to be expected that you&#8217;ll feel <em>less<\/em> efficient until your body and muscles adjust.\u00a0 But trust me, it&#8217;ll be worth it, when you&#8217;re running injury-free and tackling distances you&#8217;ve never before thought possible.<\/p>\n<p>So let&#8217;s first get clear on exactly what I mean when I say &#8220;180 steps per minute.&#8221;\u00a0 I&#8217;m talking about the <strong>total number of impacts you make with the ground in one minute &#8212; that is, count both feet.<\/strong> (Some people call this your cadence and measure the number of times a single foot impacts the ground, so you might hear some people refer to this as a &#8220;cadence of 90.&#8221;\u00a0 Same thing.)<\/p>\n<p>The easiest way to learn what this feels like is to think of it as three steps each second.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s what I recommend you do:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Get on a treadmill.<\/li>\n<li>Set it to a brisk but comfortable speed (running really slowly for this is actually harder than running fast, at first).<\/li>\n<li>Start running, and time your steps so that each time a second ticks, your third step impacts the ground.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>So for example, if your right foot lands when the clock shows one second (0:01), then it&#8217;ll be \u201cleft\u201d then \u201cright\u201d again before your left foot lands exactly when the clock hits 0:02. Then \u201cright,\u201d then \u201cleft\u201d before your right foot hits on 0:03. And so on.<\/p>\n<p>Once you get the hang of it, you&#8217;ll find it&#8217;s pretty easy to get into a rhythm.\u00a0 It&#8217;s sort of like a waltz. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<h3>Now get comfortable with it<\/h3>\n<p>It takes a while for this feel normal, but once you&#8217;ve done it enough, it will.<\/p>\n<p>Assuming you won&#8217;t always be running on a treadmill or staring down at your watch while you run, it&#8217;s helpful (if you wear headphones while you run) to find a song whose beat matches this tempo, so that you can just run with the music.<\/p>\n<p>The song I always recommend for this is Eric Johnson&#8217;s<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=55nAwmVLQSk\"> <em>Cliffs of Dover<\/em><\/a>, which is entirely instrumental but actually a pretty good song to run to (note that it doesn&#8217;t get going until about 45 seconds in).\u00a0 But you can find any other song that&#8217;s roughly this tempo, or even one that&#8217;s half as fast &#8212; in that case, you just have to take two steps for every beat instead of one.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, realize that you won&#8217;t always need a crutch like a clock or headphones to do this.\u00a0 Eventually this turnover rate will be grooved, and it&#8217;ll just be what you naturally do.\u00a0 I still glance down at my watch for two or three seconds every now and then to line my steps up, but if that&#8217;s not your thing, you can imagine that you&#8217;re <strong>running barefoot over broken glass<\/strong> to get the image of quick, light steps.<\/p>\n<h3>One more thing: what about speed?<\/h3>\n<p>More than just about anything else, it&#8217;s this tip that compels people to email me and tell me how much this has helped them stop getting injured and run longer.\u00a0 But a question often comes up:<\/p>\n<p class=\"notice\" style=\"text-align: center;\">How should this stride rate change depending on how fast you run?<\/p>\n<p>The simple answer is, &#8220;It shouldn&#8217;t.&#8221;\u00a0 Keep this constant turnover rate of 180 steps per minute, and adjust your running speed by changing your stride length.\u00a0 For slow, relaxed runs, you&#8217;ll be taking very short steps, and when you want to open it up for a 5K or something even shorter and faster, you&#8217;ll lengthen your stride so that you cover more ground with each step.\u00a0 But you&#8217;re still taking 180+ steps each minute at all speeds.<\/p>\n<h3>Don&#8217;t just read this, use it!<\/h3>\n<p>It&#8217;s really easy to read along, nod your head, and say, &#8220;Yeah, that makes sense.&#8221;\u00a0 But it&#8217;s another thing entirely to put it into action, and it takes a special person to do it.<\/p>\n<p>Be that type of person.\u00a0 Give this a try.\u00a0 As I said above, this is the most important change I made that helped me stop getting injured and become the runner I knew I could be.\u00a0 And it might be that for you, too, but you&#8217;ll never know if you don&#8217;t give it a try.<\/p>\n<p>So get to work, and I&#8217;ll see you soon.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Matt<\/p>\n<p class=\"notice\">Did you arrive here from a forwarded email, a link on Twitter or Facebook, or a search engine? If you enjoyed this article, you can join our email list <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/7-foods-start-here\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Simple Way to Injury-Proof Your Stride (for Good!) Lots of people will tell you that running, by nature, is hard on the body.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll say that running 13.1 or 26.2 miles &#8220;isn&#8217;t natural,&#8221; and that &#8220;we&#8217;re just not meant to run that far.&#8221; But guess what? This is total B.S.! New theories about early [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-34608","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Simple Way to Injury-Proof Your Stride (for Good!) | No Meat Athlete<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/injury-proof-your-running-stride\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Simple Way to Injury-Proof Your Stride (for Good!) | No Meat Athlete\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Simple Way to Injury-Proof Your Stride (for Good!) Lots of people will tell you that running, by nature, is hard on the body.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll say that running 13.1 or 26.2 miles &#8220;isn&#8217;t natural,&#8221; and that &#8220;we&#8217;re just not meant to run that far.&#8221; But guess what? This is total B.S.! 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Lots of people will tell you that running, by nature, is hard on the body.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll say that running 13.1 or 26.2 miles &#8220;isn&#8217;t natural,&#8221; and that &#8220;we&#8217;re just not meant to run that far.&#8221; But guess what? This is total B.S.! 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