Run Faster, Injury-free & Look Good Doing it - Part I.

   Forgive me for the reiteration but sometimes it is necessary: the way in which you run matters. Someone once told me, “just not to think about it”, sound advice for a four year old child, not so for the rest of us. Now, most of you won't be running correctly. Stop crying, it is not your fault, blame the system. I will be addressing what's going wrong, why, what this is doing and what can be done about it - all so that you can move more efficiently. This a two part story. (Please take heed that this subject won't be dealt with by the oh-so- familiar, all-too-theatrical but refreshingly jovial hand of late. There will be no double entrendres, crude innuendos or suggestive mention of sex (giggle giggle). Today is about running. Skip to the bottom if you are, how do I put this....experiencing a crisis of faith.)

Les Problems:

The influx of cushioned trainers, pushed on us by polo-shirt wearing salesmen who have been brainwashed by company-funded medical journals is rife and has done nothing to amend the number of running injuries per annum in the last twenty-odd years. Kids have their podgy little feet rammed into Nike Air trainers to appease their fashion-conscious but ultimately blame free mothers. Unfortunately, this little statement may turn heads in the playground but does little to aid the development of the child's feet: the arch under-develops and the foot muscles don't learn to properly engage. The damage will not have been as bad for those (the following is whispered, so as not to incite maternal fury) of the middle or older age, but a generation of problems awaits us still.

However, forgetting the youth for just a moment, if you are reading this in your running or gym gear then please take off your shoes and feel for the now infamous 'arch support' in your trainer. Found it? Well done. Now feel your foot (it's not what you think. N'est pas de fetishes here...unless you're into that sort of stuff, which I'm not...unless you are? -silence- ) and you'll find an arch or something that resembles close to being one. This arch is the key to running effectively and injury free. This is what happens to the foot, on impact:

The 'arch flattens' and the 'toes spay apart' – taking away the impact and allowing for a free-flowing, balanced gait. Now, if you whack a wedge underneath your arch, the impact will travel straight up and through your body. Add in a little corporation-fuelled encouragement and you'll find yourself land heel first, whilst your foot is taped into a £120 pair of trainers, slamming your bodyweight behind each step, unaware of the actual impact it's having on your body.

Les Consequences:

• Injury – it may not happen today, tomorrow or even next year but it will happen. Whether you destroy your knees (probably patellofemoral pain syndrome) through years of heel strikes, encounter lower back pain, wake up with a dull ache and bruising in your heel as well as your arch (plantar fasciitis), or try to live with shin splints, the injuries will come.
  
  
• You Run Slower – landing on your heel means it is in front of your mid-line, which means you are essentially braking, ever so slightly, every time you take a step. Contact time with the ground creates more friction, which slows you down; 'running is a perpetual action that is only hindered by foot contact time'.

Here Endeth the Lesson:

I will leave you with this: 'Why did we evolve the way we did only to ignore our baser instincts; the way we were born to run; the way children run; the way you run when you take off those fluffy trainers, placed there because because someone, somewhere, wants to make money? I am far from being the hemp wearing, feather adorned, free love preaching, ukulele playing hipster you imagine; I am just someone exhausted by being told to “mind the gap between the train and the platform”. You should be too.' (Frederick Wardlaw, Why We Should All Run Naked, With or Without Wolves, (Oxford: Claredon Press, 2013), pp. 39)

Part II will discuss what one ought to be doing when running, and in what footwear. It will also be positively full to the brim with puns and innuendos.