Running is a fantastic form of exercise, it helps to boost your cardiovascular fitness, improves your strength and maintain your weight.
There can be a worry that you’ll pick up injuries when you run, but if you plan your training carefully and have a balance between running and strength exercises you can progress well.
Many of you will know about the issue I’ve had with my knee over the last few months, thanks to some body boarding and ‘old lady breaststroke’ during the August bank holiday weekend.
Its turns out I’ve torn part of the cartilage in my knee, and I now have the long slow recovery process to work through, as I’m very keen to avoid a surgery on it.
I'm going to go through what IT band syndrome is, you might know it as your iliotibial band, it can be shortened to IT band, ITB syndrome, ITBS. It’s a common over use injury that leads to a thickening of the connective tissue that runs from your hip to your knee. And as that thickens, that causes the tightness, tensions and inflammation within that area, which then leads to the pain in your knee. Your IT band helps to stabilize your knee joint, it stops that rotational movement happening. When it gets weakened, that's when it becomes painful.
We're going to look a little bit today about what is runner's knee. Commonly, this is when you're getting pain at the front of your knee when you're running.
What is Runners Knee?
It can be your worst fear as a runner getting injured and not being able to train or race. Often getting knee, shin or foot pain you can it put to the back of your mind and hope that it’ll go away. But unfortunately that is never the case. In most circumstances if you ignore the problem it is only going to get worse.
As many of you know my Auntie and Uncle were running the London Marathon this year for Children with Cancer UK. They had set themselves a mammoth challenge of raising £8k for them, this was smashed on the day the total had already exceeded £11k which is amazing.
They had put in all the training and hard work building up to The London Marathon and sometimes the plan going a little off track as everyday life, work and families often decided to throw a spanner in the works but come to think of it, whose plan ever goes 100% successfully.
As a runner your hip flexors are one of the common muscle groups that becomes tighter and can cause a number of problems if left untreated.
Not sure what or where your hip flexors are?
They are the group of muscles that help to bend forwards at the hips and raise your leg you your waist.
They include these muscles in your body
Your hip flexors don't just get tight from running, if you have a desk based job or do a lot of driving this can also be a problem as your hip is in a flexed position and this can lead to the muscle getting shorter before you have exercised and put any tension through it.
As a runner it can be your worst nightmare about getting injured, especially if you have a race coming up or it's the only time to get to yourself away from day to day life, so in this blog we're going to chat about 'How to avoid injuries when you're running'.
Your greatest fear might be getting painful knees and pulling a muscle, this can happen as you start increasing your training and the distances that your running.
Knee Pain From Running
Interestingly enough, most people who complain about knee injury caused by running are not runners themselves. They usually make it seem that knee injuries are inevitable for runners and that runners are literally running their knees to the ground with every step. However, knee injuries are not inevitable, though they are common and can be easily corrected. Knee pain should not cause you to automatically quit running.