“We were told that running doesn’t make you strong, running makes you
better at running.” – this is an utter nonsense thing to say, what
does it actually even mean? Of course running makes you stronger,
there are millions of humans on this planet who have become stronger
and healthier through running who have never done a single strength
session in their lives.

“In order to run to keep fit, you must be fit to run.” – Again utter
nonsense, empty meaningless words. Praying on people’s feelings of
weakness, vulnerability and inability is a vile aspect of running
culture that is becoming more and more prevalent. I see this more and more every time I hear a physiotherapist speak about running or open a running magazine, the total myth that you can only run if you are strong and capable. It is nothing short of body fascism.

“If you have a weakness and you go running, running will not
strengthen or fix this weakness, rather it will adapt and compensate.”
– Yet more empty, dangerous and insulting talk of runners being weak
and incapable. The idea that there is a perfect running form or an
ideal human form to run with is insulting. The human body is
constantly adapting and compensating to deal with certain situations
it finds itself in. Look at Priscah Jeptoo-her running form
illustrates many bio-mechanical differences from other elite athletes of
her class yet she has found through adaptation and compensation of these
differences a running strength that finds the path of least resistance
and has lead to her being one of the greatest distance runners ever. Does her differences mean she is constantly injured as the statement suggests, no, is the answer.

If I sat you down and made you learn to play the piano for six months
(an activity similar to running in that you need awareness, strength,
practice and determination to achieve) and I gave you two different
ways in which to learn, which one would you choose? Option one:
sitting at the piano and learning to play and strengthen your hands
whilst you learned at the piano keyboard or, option two: sitting at a
table with some hand strengthening apparatus and exercises and
strengthening you hands first for four weeks before you sat at the
piano for the last two. Which one do you think would make you a more
capable, happy and successful piano player after those 6 weeks. I
notice Greg suggested that to strengthen your muscles his advice is
to perform single leg squats, lunges, hopping and other gym based
strengthening exercises. The same advice that suggests that running
alone can’t strength your muscles. What on earth is running if it is
not a set of continuous single leg squats, lunges and hops.

I see some of the strongest, fittest runners through my clinic, whose
bodies are balanced to perfection, they spend hours strengthening
every muscle in the gym, but they are still injured. Why? Because,
having strong muscles means nothing if you don’t know how to use them
within running. Strength does equate to ability. The problem is that
many of these runners don’t practice their running form. They miss
that running in itself repeats all of the things you are told to do
inside the sterile atmosphere of a gym and think that they will step out of a gym strong, capable and injury free. Runners can have the strongest
most balanced muscles imaginable but unless they put that balance
through the motion it was designed to take, it can still be
unbalanced.

In running we have this disgusting culture of self abuse where we are
supposed to ignore what our body is telling us and push through the
pain. That a session is not worthy of attention unless we have
“smashed” ourselves or “killed” it and left ourselves incapable of
functioning. The phrase “Go Hard or Go home” is a disgusting
illustration of the self abuse ingrained in running culture that preys
on the less talented in suggesting that unless a runner exhausts
themselves to the point of collapse then a runner is not a real
runner.

Can I ask you this, how many sessions do you run a week where all you
focus on is your running form? No Garmin, no training plan, no reps,
nothing but how your feet are landing on the ground and how your body
is moving through space. Not many I am guessing but excuse me if I am
wrong.

Look at any other sport, right to the top level. You will see athletes
practicing hour after hour of form based movements relevant to their
sport. However in running many runners ignore this form practice and
head to a gym to recreate a false sense of strength though an activity
you are perfectly capable of achieving through running, if you focus on
practice and form. I am constantly hearing the following statement
from runners “I am just a novice runner, I don’t know anything about
my body, I just go out and run”. This attitude is constantly propagated
by healthcare professions, trainers and coaches who make runners feel
stupid about their bodies,making them feel that they are filled with weakness and causing them to doubt about their capabilities. They are told to ignore the pain and unless a session is painful it has no benefit. They are told to push their bodies to the limit to progress. They are told that they will never be able to run unless they utterly transform themselves from weak imbalanced amateurs to strong, fit, elites. It is this sort of attitude which I see flowing throughout Greg’s words that I object to the most.

Being a strong capable runner is a wonderful thing and can bring
about some amazing experiences and help lessen the chances of injury.
Strength training in itself is not wrong, and can lead to some incredible benefits. It isn’t the key to injury prevention though, why do profession elite athletes all of whom continuously strength train
still find themselves injured. We will always have times of injury as
runners, just as we will always have times of illness as humans.
Trying to protect ourselves from illness and injury is a noble
endeavor. But, what is wrong within the running culture is the consistent berating of runners as weak and incapable. It is wrong to constantly fixate on people’s differences within their bodies and highlight them as faults. It is wrong to pray on those differences and suggest that you will not be able to achieve their ambitions without adhering to a myth that running is only for the strong and fit. It is wrong to suggest that there is only one way of being strong, and it is
unforgivable to suggest that running is bad for you unless your body
is in a indestructible state of strength first.

There is a terribly worrying and upsetting trend in running culture
and literature to target and illustrate every weakness a person has;
you are not running fast enough, your body is filled with
imbalance and weakness, nothing is working as it should and you are
wearing all the wrong things, eating the wrong things and training in
the wrong way to become a runner. What this trend is forgetting is that every human is already a runner,everybody has the strength and ability to run.

I refuse as a therapist to pray on peoples weaknesses. I have patients
in my clinic in tears everyday who have come from other therapists who
assess them and pull their entire bodies apart pointing out weakness.
They are left terrified. Terrified that they will never run again and that running is a dangerous and specialist sport that only the fittest and the strongest can do. Small soft tissue tears that they have presented with and that should have taken a couple of weeks to heal has been blown in to such a complicated mess and state of paranoia within their minds that some have them have not run for month even years because the only help they have received is an egotistical therapist pointing out all of the weakness within their bodies and blame them for injury and inability to run.

It is this constant feedback loop of negativity, oppression and
paranoia ingrained in the mind of runners, and the constant use of this
negative image of the runner’s body that I believe is at the heart of
injury. So many runners are terrified of their body. They have been
taught that they are filled with weakness and inability. This fear
leads to masses of tension within the body that translates to the body
not moving correctly though space when running.

If I was to give you advice as a runner it is to ignore all this
noise. Injuries will happen but how we respond to them doesn’t have to
be the same negative feedback loop about our capabilities as human’s
and as runners. If you find yourself injured be very basic, you cannot
outsmart the human body it needs rest and a stress free environment to
heal. Look at how animals behave when they are injured. They lay down
quietly, hardly moving until their body has fixed itself. As humans we
have forgotten that we are still part of the animal kingdom. Our body
heals itself if we work with it instead of constantly pushing against
it.