Running Articles/Blogs

Articles are grouped together based on theme. Please click on an article name to jump straight to it.

Injuries and Movement Efficiency

- Movement Efficiency: The Heart of our approach

- ITB Syndrome - The scapegoat for knee pain

- Heel strike or midfoot running: Which is best?

- The biggest mistake most runners make

- Recurring hamstring injuries or pain? Read this

- Tendonitis? Tendinopathy? Or neither?

Run pacing, tactics & fueling

- How to pace your runs: A brilliant example for you to learn from

- The single most important question to ask yourself before any training session

Movement Efficiency: The heart of our approach

Every runner has a different reason for running. Some to lose weight, others to maintain a healthy body, some use running as a time to decompress from the world and do some uninterrupted thinking. It is the purest form of exercise as it is just you and road. Your effort dictates the speed or distance you travel. Ultimately thats between you and yourself and it is the secret, internal battles or conversations that runners have that unites them.

Having worked in rehab for over ten years and being a movement geek I have worked with my fair share of runners.

Ultra running is one of my favourite sports to watch. I devour any form of media about the athletes that compete in the UTMB, the Western States 100 or the Moab 240. These extreme distances test those runners in ways that I cannot imagine. It ticks all of my geek boxes as psychology, movement efficiency, fueling, energy systems, sleep deprivation, pacing, race strategy, strength and endurance are all covered.

But whether you are an ultra runner or still working towards your first 5k, the injuries are nearly all the same. The most common running injuries are:

- Achilles tendonitis
- Plantar fasciitis
- Lower back pain
- Knee pain
- ITB pain

Muscles, tendons and ligaments and the joints themselves all take a huge battering over time from the sheer physics of putting one foot in front of the other at speed.

The most important theme that every injury listed above has is not strength or “weak” muscles; it is EFFICIENCY OF MOVEMENT.

How efficient you move will dictate everything in your running. The speed, cadence rate, endurance ability and recovery, are all hugely affected by your efficiency of movement. How strong you are does not matter as much because if you are strong but inefficient, your ability to run fast or for long will be inhibited.

Efficiency is all about moving as fast as you can for as long as you can with the least amount of effort. The best runners in the world appear to glide as they run. Their arms, legs, torso and head all move in fluent synchronisation. They waste no energy at all. There are no heavy slams of their feet on the ground. Their knees absorb minimal contact before extending and propelling the next step forwards.

Not everyone has the ability to move like an olympian, but you can absolutely maximise YOUR movement potential. Yes strength does come into things and the strength endurance absolutely plays a crucial role in the ability to run well. But if your hip flexors can’t do their job as well as they should do or your lower back won’t allow the right amount of rotation to occur in the pelvis as you move from leg to leg, then your efficiency drops and your likelihood of pain or injury massively increases.

This is why, movement assessment and efficiency is at the very heart of our treatment here. You won’t just have tight hamstrings massaged or hip flexors stretched and worked on. We need to know WHY your hamstrings might be tight or why your hip flexors feel like they may be doing all the work.

Using our Four Step - Treatment Process, we look at how efficiently your muscular system is working from a neurological perspective. Then we aim to improve that efficiency and build it up so that the same issues don’t return.

For example, if your calves are tight or you have achilles pain, then why is that? Could it be that your hips are not extending as well as they should and your glutes aren’t doing their job as well as they could? “Sleepy” glutes is a thing, but WHY your glutes may not be working so well, causing your calves and hamstrings to take on more of the work is the most important question to answer. The answer is not simply that they are weak or tight. When you can get your nervous system to allow the normal resumption of activities to occur, thats when the magic happens. Just doing glute exercises won’t be enough until you resolve the WHY behind their inefficiency.

We test them in clinic using manual muscle testing techniques, movement assessment and challenges to see the big picture. Then using neurological techniques designed to help the nervous system balance any “threat” it may seem from problem/hypersensitive areas, we aid the normal, efficient movement you were born with and deserve. This is why what we do here goes WAY beyond the normal realms of sports therapy; giving exercises or working on tight muscles alone does not account for the ability to increase efficiency from a deep, neurological perspective. Results are all that matter and how we get there is less important than the end result. But our deep motivation to

This is a small snapshot of what happens in a treatment session. Each treatment is as unique as you are. Your running gait and efficiency is unique to you and the assessment and treatment of it will be tailored just for you. No two treatments are ever the same.

This is why those athletes or casual runners who use our services as a regular part of their training regime enjoy personal bests frequently.

Now its your turn.

ITB Syndrome: The scapegoat for knee pain

If I had a pound for every time I’ve seen someone diagnosed with ITB syndrome whose symptoms in reality had zero to do with the ITB, I’d be pretty well off.

ITB syndrome much like Irritable Bowel Syndrome for the gut, is a term thrown about willy-nilly for lateral knee pain. You may hear phrases like; “your knee tracking is off” or “your Iliotibial band is too tight”. It is important to know that a “syndrome” is simply just a name that covers a set of symptoms.

Firstly lets set the scene and look at the key players; The Iliotibial band is a thick piece of connective tissue that stems from the outer side of your knee, runs all the way up the outer side of your thigh and joins in with connective tissue of other muscles just above your hip. Its main role is to create stability of the hip and pelvis and to aid with correct posture.

Due to its large area span and the fact that it connects to both the pelvis and the knee, when people experience lateral (outer) knee pain, the ITB is commonly blamed. The knee is a very complex yet sturdy joint that has a huge range of movement but has to deal with massive amounts of pounds of pressure during movement. For this reason, having a strong piece of connective tissue that runs from its outside, all the way up to the hip is very important to prevent a collapse during movement.

ITB syndrome, hip pain, running performance, knee rehab

Foam rolling of the iliotibial band is form of savage pain that only those that have tried it can attest to. But what if I told you that all those agonising moments rolling it were a total waste of time, would you believe me? Lets get one thing very clear from the outset, the ITB is meant to be really tight. It is made from thick layers of collagen (a type of protein) that serve to hold things together. So using a piece of foam (even if it is a hard foam roller) won’t do much to “soften” or lengthen its connective tissue. The same goes for deep tissue massage of the ITB. It can help alleviate some of the acute sensations of tightness but as soon as you stand and weight bear, the forces running through your limbs will instinctively cause the tissue to tighten up once more, as it is supposed to.

Having a tight ITB is very unlikely to cause your patellar (knee cap) to not track correctly either, or if it is, it is more likely to be a secondary issue to other things.

So what are these things that can cause the knee pain associated with ITB syndrome that are not the ITB?

IBT syndrome, knee pain, running injuries, injury rehab

Look at the following image of the muscles and connective tissue of the lower limbs. You’ll see dozens of muscles. Some, like the rectus femoris are really long and connect from the pelvis all the way down to the lower leg. Others like the popliteus are small and serve a specific role in knee flexion (bending) and supporting of the rear of the knee joint. The point is that each of these muscles serve many different roles at different angles of movement. They work together and against one another to create movement but also to maintain stability and functionality of the joint(s) that they move. Their interactions and the quality/efficiency of those interactions will dictate how well you move and whether you feel any pain or not.

It is far too reductionist to just blame a tight ITB. Maybe it is tighter than it should be? But WHY is it tight or inflamed? This is the single biggest question that requires answering.

Perhaps you have a tight hamstring muscle or lower leg muscle right now. Maybe the major joints of your big toe don’t want to move too well to protect you from a threat that is perceived to be there? Maybe that stiff lower back you’ve had for a few months that prevents you from being able to comfortably tie your shoe laces could be involved? The point is that you are incredibly unique, complex and wonderful. The myriad of factors that all contribute to a healthy, happy knee are as vast and complex as you are an individual.

WHY these muscles or joints became tight painful and inefficient is what matters.

The single largest factor that causes knee pain is movement inefficiency compounded by lots of strenuous activity. Here is an example of a case I worked on a few months back of a gentleman who had classic ITB syndrome symptoms in his right knee that were NOT caused by a tight ITB…

On assessment, it was very noticeable that he had a very stiff, right ankle that didn’t want to move in its full range of motion. if your brain perceives there to be a movement in the ankle that is dangerous (but may or may not actually be so), it will prevent you from doing said movement to protect you. An ankle joint that doesn’t have full range of motion will absolutely affect how efficiently all the muscles further up the chain contract or lengthen. And this is what we found in this individual. The subtle changes to movement ability can, over a period of time result in extra stress running through the knee, hip and lower back. Ultimately, these extra forces can result in inflammation of joints/tendons/ligaments, pain and further inefficiency in movement.

In this case it wasn’t his ITB that was an issue. When we were able to desensitise his nervous system to the perceived threat in his ankle, the joint opened up allowing greater range of motion and the negative affects to the muscles further up the chain were normalised. The end result being pain eradication.

This is but one example of many. The gist to take away from it is that ITB Syndrome is just a name for a set of symptoms and to tackle it requires a personalised approach.

If you have been struggling for a while with these sorts of symptoms, have tried numerous strengthening exercises or spent hours painfully rolling out or massaging your ITB, then perhaps consider taking a different approach.

Heel strike or midfoot running: Which is best?

This is a fairly contentious subject in the running world. Some experts say that there is no proof that outside of sprinting, there is no need to land your foot anywhere other than your heel. That a nice heel strike is perfectly fine. Others are adamant that mid or forefoot landing is far superior to heel striking.

So what is best?

We are going to get a little technical here but there is some gold below. Here are my thoughts on the subject.

In a normal walking gait, landing on the heel is the most effective way to move. Of that there is no contention. The calcaneus (heel bone) is perfectly slanted on the lower outside edge to allow for a perfectly landed heel strike. The design of the bone allows for optimal transition of force to roll from the heel through to the mid foot (where your talus bone will glide to the inside of your foot allowing for a nice pronation/flat foot). That movement transition flows through the middle of your feet onto the toes, ultimately resulting in the final contact being your big toe as you propel yourself forward.

How well you heel strike/pronate/supinate in that order will dictate how well, practically every joint in your body moves. Whether you can go into pronation (flat footed section of gait) and out again will dictate how well your glutes are able to fire/lengthen. This will dictate the forces that travel up through your spine and the amount of rotation you can expect in the pelvis and rib cage.

So heel striking is important and is actually the most commonly used technique in runners. One study looked at 1991 marathon runners, analysing their gait and found that 93% of them naturally ran in a heel strike fashion. So if this is you, don’t fret that you need to be doing something different.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23006790/

But it is the most efficient way to run?

This is where I tend to agree with the mid/forefoot crowd. Remember that at the centre of all movement performance is EFFICIENCY. To move efficiently, the goal is to go from A to B as fast as you can whilst using and losing as little energy as possible. This is how you go faster with less energy expended. As a result you keep your heart rate down and are able to maintain a pace for longer.

Where mid/forefoot running wins in my eyes is on that initial contact with the ground. The aim here is to spend as little time as possible with your feet contacting the ground and with the least amount of jarring or energy loss in that time.

The harder you hit the ground and the more time your foot has contact with the ground results in more movement/kinetic energy lost in the process. The aim is to land and immediately spring forward. By landing on the mid to forefoot you skip a section of the gait cycle of the feet. There is very little jarring or loss of energy into the ground because you land on partially loaded achilles and calf muscles which react and help to further propel you forwards. Using this style you don’t land with a thump on the floor as is the case when heel striking at speed. Think of yourself like a spring lamb or antelope, hopping lightly from one leg to the other as your calf muscles are always slightly loaded upon landing. Essentially, running is a series of thousands of little jumps.

There are however some limitations to forefoot striking that can result in recurring injuries.

Forefoot strikers require more movement in the ankle and less at the knees and hips. More load is placed on the ankle joint, achilles tendon and calf muscles (as they don’t get to fully lengthen due to not heel striking). If you don’t have stable ankles and glute muscles that are effectively doing their job, far too much force will run through the calf muscles and achilles resulting in tight, over worked and sometimes injured muscles. Thats not to say that heel strikers don’t get the share of injuries as patellar issues around the knee and hip pain tend to follow as more load is placed through those areas.

So how easy is it to transition to a more forefoot striking style?

As mentioned above, heel striking is still the dominant form choice for most runners (even professional runners) so don’t feel like you have to. Ultimately it comes down to your own mechanics. We are all born with different limb lengths which in turn affects muscle and tendon lengths. Basic physics will tell you that the forces required to make a long lever move are drastically different to shorter levers. So bear in mind that your unique genetic makeup will dictate what will be the best running style for you.

Some coaches offer drills that focus on conscious placement of the feet. But the simplest way is to shorten your stride length whilst increasing your step count. Step count is simply how many steps you take in a minute. When dialling this into my own running, in the early days I would run whilst listening to a metronome to ensure that I was keeping a consistent step count. Nowadays if I find myself wanting to keep an eye on things I’ll count steps whilst measuring my breath cadence to ensure that everything is in sync. Shortening your stride length forces you to land with your feet underneath you, which in turn allows you to land on the mid - fore part of your foot, excelerating the speed in which you turnover steps. But even if you do land on your heel, by increasing your step rate you will be changing the angle in which your foot hits the ground. A shorter but quicker stride length will cause the foot to hit the ground at a totally different angle to a longer stride. All factors worth considering when looking at your own dynamic gait style. These changes in angles will affect impact forces and many believe that this is more important than the actual place within the foot that you land.

Remember, It is all about the pursuit for effortless movement, not laboured, inefficient running.

One more variable that you can control to help with foot placement when running is your shoe choice. The advancements in footwear technology has come on huge leaps in the past decade. There are now shoe types for all styles of running. There is no ideal shoe type, only those that work for you. It may take a while to find the right level of support, cushioning or flexibility for you, but it will be worth it in the long run. We will discuss footwear in another article at some point.

Whatever way you look at it, the most efficient style of running for you is one that limits impact forces, spends the least amount of time with foot contact on the ground and allows you to find your flow and rhythm. It may take a bit of exploration and failed attempts, but thats what the journey is about, isn’t it?

The biggest mistake most runners make

Training methods have moved on tremendously over the decades. Running is no exception. Long distance running (and certainly cycling as well) have probably seen the greatest advances in training methods, nutrition and recovery methods over the last 50 years. Elite athletes are generally surrounded by a team of professionals that can guide them on every detail regarding their performance. Outside of the elite, the biggest mistake that most runners make all the time that hinders their performance abilities; they stay in their lane and don’t do any strength/resistance training.

You see this all the time in the world of exercise; strength athletes do little cardio and cardio athletes do little strength training. When in reality, both sets of athletes need to adopt some of the methods that the other possesses. And if they did, they would see their performance rates increase and their injury rates decrease.

We see this regularly in clinic when an amateur runner gets injured during their training for a half or full marathon. As their volume of training increases, so does the likelihood of injury. Sometimes pain or injuries are down to inefficient gait and hyper sensitisation of certain areas, or increases in inflammation of joints/tendons. Oftentimes, behind many of these types of pain/injury scenarios is a lack of resilience to their bodies in response to the stress they are putting them under. In clinic we are sometimes able to rectify this quite quickly if this is down to gait changes, burnout or lack of recovery/nutrition. Other times it runs a little deeper and requires a little more targeted work on the part of the individual that should come in the form of resistance training.

There are some common misconceptions and barriers that a lot of runners have regarding doing resistance training. Some are completely oblivious to the fact that working on strength and strength endurance can drastically improve performance and reduce injury rates. Others are just unsure as to what to actually do. Running is easy; trainers on, out the door and off your go. Managing a resistance training program of exercises, reps, tempo’s, weights and rest periods can for some be a really daunting place and therefore they just ignore it. And lets be honest, for new individuals who haven’t ever done strength training, the gym can be a pretty intimidating place. At the heart of it all is our fear of looking like a fool and doing it all wrong, or looking weak in front of others. And there is nothing wrong in feeling like that. Every single person that ever went to the gym for the first time or started a new sport had these fears as well. This is where working with a coach who can program the workouts or a trainer who can be there with you to guide you through the process can be useful.

We know its useful and scary to start so why should you go outside your comfort zone and start it? What are the benefits to your running?

The benefits are vast and can have HUGE implications for performance:

Targeted training helps to increase the strength and overall resilience of ligaments and tendons and ultimately the joints in the body. These are the most injured areas in runners as volume/intensity of running workouts increase. Strengthening the ligaments and tendons protects joints and improves the longevity of an athletes running season and overall lifespan of running career. Having a more robustly (think stronger not bulkier) built body will help you avoid burnout or fatigue.
Resistance training specifically targets fast twitch, type 2 muscle fibres. Training these muscle fibre types help give runners a finishing kick or burst of tactical speed in a race. Although running at low intensities or slower speeds should be a foundational component of every runners training, doing this exclusively hinders their ability to maintain a faster pace when they need or want it.
Runners who train this also give themselves a leg up when it comes to hilly sections of a race. This is because it takes more power on each step to propel yourself up a hill. The same applies to downhill sections of a race as leg muscles fatigue quicker when having to slow you down when running downhill. Having that strength endurance pays huge dividends if you are able to prevent your quads and knee extensors from blowing out when dealing with a longer downhill section.
Resistance training also uses glycolysis as the main energy system to fuel the type 2 muscle fibres. In short, this is when your body uses glucose as the primary fuel source with one of the end products being lactic acid. Training these muscle fibre types allows your body to adapt to using this energy system and clearing the byproducts. Like all things in life, the more you expose your body to a particular stimulus, the better it adapts to it. Speed/sprint based workouts do apply this stimulus to the body BUT to maximise power and endurance potential, they are not enough. Having a body that can very quickly and efficiently adapt to increased requirements of speed or power will definitely result in improved performance.

Building the complete package of training, both the slow twitch (fat as primary fuel source) and fast twitch (glucose as primary fuel source) through both sprint based and resistance training based workouts is what those who want to maximise their potential should consider applying.

Remember, don’t just stay in your lane. Runners who just run, will be out run by those who apply a broad range of training types.

To work with me, please fill in the contact form and we can discuss your performance and how you can optimise it to achieve new personal bests.

Recurring hamstring injuries or pain? Read this

Recurring hamstring injuries are one of the most

common issues in sport. It’s normal to be carrying

niggles or minor injuries from time to time; that’s just

part of playing a sport or being active.

It is when these injuries don’t fully recover or recur

time and again that things need to looked at a little

deeper.

The first questions that need answering are:

Is the pain you are experiencing actual damage

or injury to the soft tissue of the hamstring?

2. Is the pain what is known as neuropathic in

nature, which basically means; is your brain thinking

there is a problem when there actually isn’t?

The answers to these questions will and should have huge ramifications on the type of rehabilitation required. The problem though with a lot of traditional points of view are that recurring hamstring injuries are treated as the name implies, an actual injury.

Far too often any pain experienced by an athlete is instantly treated like an actual injury to the area affected. But when scans are completed there is frequently no signs of damage or inflammation. So the pain or tightness in the hamstring is put down to the muscles being weak. Here follows an intensive course of strengthening exercises, stretches and massages to try and make that muscle strong again.

But what if the muscle is already strong?

What if the hamstring is not the real cause for the pain?

What is going on in the rest of the body? Can your ankles move to their full potential? Can your pelvis move freely? Is your lower back or neck stiff or struggling with niggles?

Why might the subconscious part of your brain see the movements that cause pain as dangerous when there is no actual “injury” of note?

Are you feeling burnt out or stressed?

These are all questions that simply must be explored when looking at a recurring injury of any sort, but particularly when assessing a hamstring issue.

If the medical team around you aren’t looking at these variables then perhaps you are missing out on one of the underlying cause(s) of your pain. It is important to look at injury of a dynamic and important part of your body through a critical lens and take into account as many of the variables and connections to other parts of your body as possible. This is why what we do here is different. We assess your movement potential, looking at the movement of every joint and take into account their limitations or increased ranges.

We think about how these limitations may affect or are affecting your movement/power potential and how/why this may be contributing to your pain or injury.

We test the musculoskeletal system through a functional neurology lens, looking at the ability of muscles like your hamstring to be able to fully contract or lengthen in all ranges and joint positions.

If there are limitations of movement ability or weakness/inhibition of muscles or movement, instead of just releasing the tight areas or prescribing strengthening exercises, we help find what is CAUSING those to occur in the first place. If you treat treat the underlying causes for pain or movement limitation, the brain no longer needs to keep your hamstrings or hip flexors tight. There won't be any need to feel pain. They will be able to resume their normal job.

But say for arguments sake you did have an injury or surgery to your hamstring or one of the muscles or joints around that area. These same questions need to be answered and improvements in the ability to move fully and for the brain to do so in a manner that feels safe.

It is important to realise that just because your injury or surgery has healed, it doesn’t necessarily mean your brain thinks that area is safe again.

What we do here is facilitate changes to the nervous system so that areas/movements that were once seen as dangerous (creating limitations in movement or pain), are no longer viewed as something that can cause harm or needs to be avoided.

Don’t presume, test.

Tendonitis? Tendinopathy? Or neither?

Over use issues suck. And they suck more because a

lot of the time they occur midway through things

going good. You may be halfway through a training

block, or you may have started a new activity or sport

and are just getting into it. Then you get pain and a

diagnosis of tendinopathy or maybe tendonitis.

But what is tendinopathy and Tendonitis? What

causes them and are then even a real injury?

Lets get into it and answer these questions.

Firstly lets define what an injury is.

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines an injury

as: "Physical harm or damage to someone’s body

caused by an accident or attack".

There are obviously shades of grey regarding this but at its heart is that physical damage has occurred.

Tendonitis fits into this category as real tendonitis is the physical inflammation of tendons. Tendopathy on the other hand is a general term used to describe pain of an area that cannot be explained. A common misconception is that all pain is caused by an injury. This is false.

The medical profession likes putting things in boxes, so when you present with pain on the outside of the hip you may get diagnosed with gluteal tendinopathy. Or you may have been told you have hip flexor tendinopathy. It may be reassuring to be given such diagnoses, but what use are they if we don’t know or look for WHY they occurred? These aren’t real medical diagnoses; they simply mean you have pain in your glutes or hips or inflammation in an tendon and we don’t know why, other than maybe it's because you like to run.

Both tendonitis and tendinopathy are generally classed as “overuse” injuries because they occur in individuals who have a high volume of training (but not always). Long distance runners are classic examples of the type of people likely to be diagnosed with either of these. And genuine overuse is sometimes a valid reason for either inflammation in tendonitis and undiagnosed pain in tendinopathy. But these genuine overuse reasons occur very occasionally.

The standard approach to viewing these sorts of diagnosis is that these areas are weak and you need to do rehab exercises to “even” out a muscular imbalance that caused the injury/pain to occur. In my opinion, this approach is half right in that things weren’t working as efficiently as normal. If everything was working fine there wouldn’t be pain. But just because a group of muscles isn’t working as well as they should does not mean that they are inherently weak and need “strengthening”.

Conventional methods of rehab confuse inefficiency and weakness as the same thing or mutually occurring at the same time. But that is false, and here is why.

A movement can become inefficient because of weakness, that is true and a possibility. But a movement can also become inefficient because the brain feels the need to avoid or protect you from something it sees as dangerous. It is the latter that is the most likely scenario and rectifying that will in my experience bring about much swifter resolution to the problem.

For example, if some stretch information from a knee ligament is viewed by the brain as dangerous, it will want to avoid stretching it.

In response to this perceived danger your subconscious will change your movement, forcing you to avoid that part of your knee as much as possible; resulting in over working other areas. These “other” areas are classic hotspots for tendonitis and inflammation to occur as well as the pain associated with tendinopathy. They tend to be the areas that are either bearing the brunt of the work or are limited in their ability to move because the brain is avoiding something.

The efficiency of so many muscles up and down the chain change and this myriad of increases and decreases of muscular tone will have an effect on both physical performance AND whether you are likely to feel pain or not.

As you can see, things are much more complicated than “you have tendonitis - your muscles are weak - do this list of exercises.

So how do we treat these sorts of symptoms in clinic?

First off we go through an in depth gait and movement assessment to see how efficiently you are moving. This is the best place to start as your subconscious controls how well you can move.

Then we look to identify areas/movements/muscles that are not working as efficiently as they should. Then, through the neurological techniques at our disposal we found out WHY muscular imbalance or pain occurred and help the brain to desensitise from these areas of perceived danger. When we manage that, normal movement will resume and the reasons for the pain or inflammation will no longer be there.

If you are dealing with genuine inflammation and tendonitis we will use other methods like cold laser (photobiomodulation) therapy to help speed up the process of healing and reduction in inflammation.

We will also discuss lifestyle factors, diet and supplements that will be useful to aid bringing the level of inflammation down.

All of this occurs in the first few stages of our four part treatment process and is why we believe that searching for the root cause(s) for pain or inflammation is far superior to massaging a painful area of attempting exercises to strengthen a “weak” muscle.

Heel pain image shutterstock_1551586220.jpg

These two factors shape your ability to run faster and stay injury free....Or not

It isn’t how many grams of carbs or fats you eat (even though they are very important).

It isn’t how many ice baths or sauna sessions you have (also really very useful).

It certainly isn’t the nice new training shoes you bought.

It’s two simple things that describe your workouts:

Exercise intensity
Exercise Volume

Understanding (or not) what they are and what they mean for your body, it’s ability to recover or improve could be the biggest piece of knowledge you’ll learn this year.

Lets get into it….

EXERCISE INTENSITY

How fast you are running, how heavy are the weights you are lifting, how short are your rest periods and how high did your heart rate get.

These variables are all about the effort of the current workouts. The harder you work, the harder the strain and the higher the heart rate are all measurements of intensity. The more intense a training session or training block is will be the single largest factor with regards to recovery. This is because when you work really, really hard its not just about the recovery of the muscle fibres or the replenishment of glucose in muscles or the liver; its about the strain these types of workouts have on the nervous system.

Nervous system strain is probably one of the most overlooked areas of recovery time because its difficult to see or measure, its more that it is felt by the individual.

When you do a maximal or near maximal workout,

you are unlikely to be able to repeat this effort again

for a little while. You can absolutely train yourself to

be able to deliver multiple maximal efforts but this

takes tome. CrossFit athletes are a prime example of

individuals who over the course of a weekend are

asked to deliver maximal intensity/effort workouts

multiple times. But after their weekend of competition,

a lot of them will need to take a decent break to allow

for recovery.

High intensity results in a a huge amount of stimulus to the Sympathetic (fight and flight) branch of the nervous system. Over activation or extreme bouts of sympathetic stimulus results in body wide changes to sleep, digestion, energy and hormonal systems. Recovery and resumption to normal nervous system tone varies from person to person but this generally requires quite a bit of extra rest relative to more parasympathetic (rest and digest) stimulus.

Low intensity or recovery workouts illicit a completely different (albeit just as important) stimulus.

From a running perspective, high intensity training is predominantly working Type 2 (Fast Twitch) muscle fibres. These are muscle fibres that have a short battery life and fatigue pretty quickly. They use glucose or creatine phosphate for energy and are used for fast work or lifting heavy weights.

Low intensity running will predominantly use Type 1 (slow twitch) muscle fibres. These have the ability to work for long periods of time and use fatty acids as their main source of fuel.

If you train high intensity all the time you’ll get really good at going fast or getting stronger. You just won’t be able to do those things for long.

If all you train is low intensity you’ll turn into the Duracell bunny and can go on and on for hours. You just won’t have that finishing kick or the potential for the highest cruising speeds.

From an injury perspective, both have their risks. High intensity training puts much more stress on the joints, muscles, tendons and ligaments and requires a lot more strength and stability.

Whilst the level of forces on those areas are lower in low intensity training, the general increased time spent doing low intensity work presents different issues like repetitive strains or inflammation due to the sheer amount of time being exercised.

You are how you train.

This leads us nicely onto the next crucial element of training that affects performance/recovery/injury rates.

EXERCISE VOLUME

This is the total sum of all the work you do. The greater the volume of work (even at low intensities), the more strain on the system. Ultra runners or cyclists are those that will have the highest total volume of work during a training block. In the strength training world, body builders will have the highest volume compared to the high intensity/heavier weights of weight lifting or power lifting.

Gradually increasing volume is the best way to increase adaptation to the demands of your sport whilst decreasing injury risk. And from a running perspective, if done at low intensities like Zone 2 (60-70% of your max heart rate) creates the perfect environment to build foundational fitness and the ability to clear lactate from muscles when you do want to run fast. There is obviously a point at which the volume of work you do exceeds the threshold for gains. And that is when you need to be most in tune with your body, or work with someone who can help you see those signs.

Higher volume workouts (especially done at low intensity) don’t have the immediate stress on the sympathetic nervous system like their intense counterparts; but there is an accumulation affect on all runners or those that do any sport a lot.

The obvious double whammy are a training block of both high intensity AND high volume workouts. Think sprint type or very fast tempo (Zone 4 heart rates) multiple times a week for consecutive weeks. Most people don’t need to combine high amounts of both, unless you are training for a specific event.

You may think, “that’s certainly not me”, but a lot of people out there are doing high intensity workouts a few times a week with no rest weeks and wonder why they can’t make progress or are nursing an injury. A classic case is of someone who loves to run. They aren’t necessarily running for anything in particular, maybe just to keep fit or to lose a little weight. They run 3-4 times a week doing an average of 3-8km per run (that nice 30-60 minute workout time). This sort of person (who by the way is not at fault at all) finds after a series of weeks that they just can’t get any quicker and may become frustrated with their performance and start to lose motivation. They may even find themselves carrying more niggles in their body, or feeling more tired generally.

If you looked at their data a little closer you may find that they are actually running at the top end of their Zone 3 heart rate and low end of their Zone 4, in EVERY run. Thats 75-90% of their max heart rate, every run.

It might feel like a decent workout because (and rightly so) they are puffing really hard at the end of each run.

But if you string together 12-15 of these types of runs in a month, with no foundational or cross training work in the gym or elsewhere and aren’t recovering at home or seeing someone like us; you are on a slippery slope to injury, burnout, fatigue and regression in running speed.

Issues in performance do also appear when the volume of training is TOO LOW. If you have specific goals, are training hard but not training enough, then you won’t meet your expectations.

This is why it is really important to be aware of both the INTENSITY and the VOLUME in which you train AND the combination of them both.

If you want to Run Faster For Longer as in our mantra here promotes, you need to embrace balance in your training. Including both high and low intensity work. Be mindful of whether your volume is too low for what you want to achieve, or too high for what your body can tolerate at the moment.

How to pace your runs: A brilliant example for you to learn from

What you see below are two almost identical workouts that at the same time couldn’t be more different.

The distance is the same, the time of day they were undertaken was similar, both workouts were done fasted, weather conditions were similar, they were both run intentionally at very slow paces and the time it took to complete them was almost identical.
**Ignore the fact that one says 12.5km and other 12.4km and the differences in elevation, the Whoop strap recording this isn’t always perfect with distance. But I can assure you that the start and finish were identical between the two.

WORKOUT NUMBER 1 WORKOUT NUMBER 2

The biggest difference between the two is the time spent running in each workout was VASTLY DIFFERENT.

The run/walk intervals of Workout 1 were 1 min on/off. In Workout 2 it averaged 12 seconds of running/48 secs walking every minute.

Yes you read that correctly. One workout had 28 minutes and 52 seconds MORE running than the other, yet their times are almost identical. The pace per km was only 5 seconds different over the distance. How is that possible?

Looking at the data a little deeper you’ll see the most important factor related to the goals of these two workouts. Workout #1 was planned to be run at an easy pace, trying to move at a gentle pace with the intention of keeping the heart rate fairly low. The rest intervals were to be used to go as slow as required to bring the heart rate down before the next gentle jog. The plan was to be high Zone 2, low Zone 3 throughout. No where near race pace.

In Workout #2 the goal was completely heart rate dominated - to keep the heart rate in zone two and manipulate the pacing to ensure that was the case. The running intervals were done for 12-15 seconds at a time at a steady pace as a boost of effort to ensure the average heart rate was as consistently as possible, in Zone 2.

The workouts spent the following times in these aerobic heart rate zones;

Which workout was easier? Without even asking the individual you'd know for certain that it was #2 because there was less intensity, both on the cardiorespiratory system and metabolically. Because of this the rest periods were able to be kept at a fast paced walk which allowed for recovery from the running exertions without adding more strain to the system, which ultimately made the difference with regards to the minutes/km pace.

These times won’t set the world alight and certainly aren’t quick but what they do demonstrate is the importance of pacing and most crucially, how you can achieve comparatively decent times when working at a lower intensity. It is the foundation of being able to move slowly, well, that builds the ability/capacity to run fast for longer.

YOU CANNOT EXPECT TO RUN FAST, EFFICIENTLY UNTIL YOU HAVE LEARNT HOW TO RUN SLOWLY EFFICIENTLY.

When you spend more time in higher heart rate zones, the intensity naturally increases and so does you recovery time and strain on the nervous system. But what if you can achieve all you need to but without expending an ounce more energy than you need?

This is what efficiency is all about. Going from Point A to Point B as fast as you can, using the least amount of energy possible.

Does this mean that Workout #1 was useless? Absolutely not. Tempo based runs, working up to and around your aerobic threshold (the point after which your muscles start to produce lactic acid) have their place.

But from an efficiency standpoint, from a recovery point of view, reduced likelihood of injury standpoint and ability to go again quite soon; if I had to complete ten of these workouts in a row I know that I could do #2 all day long.

This isn’t to say that this is how YOU should train or move. The aim of this article is to get you thinking about different pacing strategies, what they might mean for your overall times, speed and distance covered. And ultimately how might they affect your ability to RUN FASTER FOR LONGER.

The single most important question to ask yourself before any training session

Any movement or exercise is better than no movement or exercise.

If you were to look at 100 workouts for the average, regular exerciser.

1-5 of them will be outstanding. I mean world beating. You will feel fantastic going in, you’ll smash personal bests and leave with such an incredible high. These are gold.

5-10 will be absolutely awful. Just dreadful. From start to finish you’ll feel tired, unmotivated and each and every step/rep/set will feel like a big bag of dog poo.

80-ish of them will feel “meh”. You achieved what you wanted to, you did the work. Didn’t set the world alight and certainly didn’t do anything to get that excited about. These are the turning up workouts. You turned up, did the work and went home. These workouts are the ones that impact your long term progress more than any other because they make up the bulk of the daily/weekly grind that is consistency.

But there is one question that too many people fail to ask of themselves before heading to a workout or planning one.

What is my intention today?

Without a goal for the workout or an understanding of what the workout is for, you’ll struggle to see progress long term.

What are the parameters of the workout? Are you meant to run fast or slow today? What are your rest periods like? What should you be doing during those rest periods? How does what I do today lead me towards my goal?

Having a desired intention for the work you are planning on doing will help keep you focused and motivated to achieve what you or your coach have planned.

If your goal is to run a new 5km personal best, what do you need to do to achieve this? Do you need to regress and go back to basics in certain areas in order to progress? Or do you have a particular weakness in your running toolkit?

Reflecting on these things and going into each workout with a known and distinct intention will help you make great progress. It doesn’t matter whether you are new to fitness or a seasoned professional. No intention = fitness stalemate.

When you understand that the majority of your workouts will be average and that in all likelihood, you’ll have more dreadful workouts than you will world beaters, you’ll be able to fully buy into the process of fitness and health. You’ll be able to knuckle down and grind through your barriers.