On Good Pain: Injury Prevention
On Good Pain
If you run and you're normal, your body has a few aches and pains, especially in the morning. Marathoners do a lot of limping and creaking in the morning. Heel and foot pain, joint stiffness, and sore backs are the most common. Pains that go away after you warm up and get moving should not be ignored, but I consider these normal training pains. Ignoring these pains will cause a serious injury.
Is Running Healthy?
Running takes a bad rap as a sport for long term health so I'm quick to read things that dispel such stuff. I'm just a 51 year old kid who has run just about every day for 30 years and I'm kicking butt! So there.
I was sent an article from the February 2001 issue of Discovery Magazine reporting on a study by physicist and biomechanist Benno Nigg. The study shows the impact and motions from life long running are not nearly as damaging as once thought. From the following information taken from the article (taken out of context), I was ready to write an article about what a bad wrap running has taken in the press.
"He and others doing similar studies found no relation between the magnitude of impact forces and the injury rate in runners. Fast runners for example, land with two to three times the force of slower runners, yet in Niggs studies they were injured no more frequently.