Blog

By Suhaanan Sabathasan

Running has always been a favourite for most people to do when trying to achieve their health goals. Whether it be to lose weight, increase fitness, obtain mental focus or just want something to do.

Now when you are starting out on your fitness journey, I feel sometimes people can be so excited yet underprepared. Therefore, here are some tips I recommend to do to allow you to achieve your goals:

1. Set a goal: whether it be distance, time or an event, set this day 1 so you know what you’re working towards.
2. Build a running program that slowly works towards your end goal. More details to come if you are just starting out.
3. Stay consistent and measure your runs: track time, distance, intensity (all lot of apps can do this for you)
4. If starting fresh: key is always listening to your body, if you want to get into running or jump back in after a long layoff then start with 2-3km runs, at least do this 2-3x week before progressing the distance. If you are feeling sore 2-3 days post then stick that certain time/distance you had, until your body can make the adaptations
5. Strength training! You need to build the muscular tolerance to endure the loads in running. Your programming doesn’t need to be complicated, keep it simple.

If you need help with this please do not hesitate to contact me. We will be going to be talking about this in a future blog so stay tuned!

Pain and Running: What Is Muscular Soreness?

Now with my past experience with runners, there is one thing I know they all hate being told, DON’T RUN!

So today I wanted to discuss when running can be bad and if you are experiencing soreness or pain how can you manage it whilst staying in line with your goals.

I imagine over your lifetime you have experienced muscular soreness post-physical activity. This feeling refers to delayed onset muscle soreness otherwise known as DOMS. In laymen’s terms, this is a combination of a hormonal, physiological, inflammatory and biomechanical response to which the body adapts to an increased physical demand. Then, in turn, resulting in a new baseline post the exercise due to this recent adaptation.

Pain is different, pain is a warning system by the central nervous system (CNS) to highlight any danger to the tissues in our body. It doesn’t mean that tissue damage is occurring but more of a reminder that the task in which you are doing may not be suitable for you.

Other ways the body can provide warnings but not all are:

• Muscle inhibition (muscles turning off)
• Muscle tightness
• Altered running mechanics/movement

When we ignore these signs and continue to push our body passed its limits then this where injury can occur. Injury can be the breakdown of tissues, for example, sprain/tear.