"Yogging..."

Veronica and I are trying this new fad called…uh…’jogging’, I believe it’s ‘jogging’, or ‘yogging’, it might be a soft ‘j’ – I’m not sure, but apparently you just run…for an extended period of time…”
- Ron Burgundy, Anchorman.

We have running on the brain around here lately. Three Training Rim alumni are running in the NYC marathon this Sunday November 1st (one of them is running to raise awareness for the Multiple Myeloma Foundation.) And a friend of mine just wrote a book called “Core Training for Distance Runners”, which is fantastic – more on that later.

So of course, I’ve been asked often recently to expand on my disdain for running, so I’m writing to expand and hopefully clarify a few things.

I have two problems with running:

1st, like most things I dislike, is simple personal taste, or lack thereof. To paraphrase another trainer, I can’t think of anything that could suck more than just running indefinitely for an extended period of time. It’s one of the reasons the Ron Burgundy quote above cracks me up.

Secondly, and more importantly as a fitness professional, is the misinterpretation that running is somehow healthy for you.

It’s not. If you believe it is, you’ve been misinformed.

It is not good for your heart and it will not help you lose body fat.

Now I know about half of you are about to stop reading, so I’ll cut to the chase: I’m not saying don’t run. I’m only saying that I don’t like it, and it’s not good for you – that’s all. Don’t get your New Balances and Asics all in a twist. I’m sure there are things I do that aren’t good for me that you don’t like.

I used to take Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. After a typical session, every muscle in my body would be completely spent and I’d be covered in sweat. Must’ve been good for me, right?

Wrong. My body was always covered in bruises. I had cuts that seemingly bled for days. I had fingers and toes dislocated. I had my elbow hyper-extended to the point of audible snapping a least 4 times. I was choked unconscious once (that I’m able to remember…)

Only a mental patient would suggest that doing that was a good, healthy habit. I did it because I found it to be fun and rewarding. But I would never suggest to someone that it would be healthy for them.

Enter distance running: Many people run for similar reasons. They enjoy the feeling of overcoming challenges, they get a “runner’s high”, they use it as an escape from the real world, etc. There’s nothing wrong with these things. If you get these things from running, by all means, run Forrest run.

But running will greatly increase your chance of having an orthopedic health problem. It really isn’t a matter if, but when your shoulder, back, knee or foot is injured.

Without turning this into an unnecessary discussion on bio-mechanics, there’s one major problem with distance running from that stand point:

With distance running, your body gets its initial movement going, then relies on momentum to a large degree to keep moving. Unlike sprinting where your body must propel itself forward at full force continually, distance running quickly deteriorates into simply picking your feet up and putting them down – never driving forward. This greatly overuses the flexors of the body designed to pick the front leg up (hip flexors, hamstrings, anterior tibials, etc) making them hyper-active and tight, causing muscle restrictions at their associated joints (hip, knee, ankle). Because, unlike sprinting, the extenders of the body (glutes, quads, calf muscles) never have to propel you forward, this creates a joint imbalance where one side of the joint is tighter than the other at all three joints. This overuse and resultant restriction of the joints typically leads to altered joint mechanics, and eventually trauma, either acute or chronic.

Additionally, because you’re relying on momentum to a certain degree, the natural tendency is to lean forward. This invariably leads to the shoulders rolling forward, causing imbalances there as well.

And no, distance running is not a good idea if fat loss is your goal. It will not raise your resting metabolism (which is the key to a fat loss program) and it’s extremely time consuming which will cut into other aspects of exercise that are more efficient for fat loss.

Think I’m wrong? Olympic sprinters have lower body fat levels than Olympic marathon runners.

And if it does benefit your heart it’s only in a marginal sense. Again, not as much as other types of training such as interval training, that you won’t have time for because you’re running for X hours at a time. Basically your heart is designed to beat at a slow steady rate for an extended period of time – forever in fact. Training it to beat at a steady rate but only slightly higher than what’s considered normal, as in distance running will have little to no positive effect.

Again: If you are a distance runner because you enjoy it, then by golly go run your arse off! But if you’re distance running (or any other type of steady state “cardio” training) because you think it’s going to make you lean and healthy, you might want to give effective strength training and high intensity interval training a shot 1st!

I’ll be awaiting your hate mail at thetrainingrim@gmail.com