Running without adequate preparations can lead to injuries that end your efforts virtually before you get a good start. Most of what follows is for beginners, but latter parts are evergreens for everyone all the time.
First Steps: To Avoid Getting Injured at the Start
I have seen many running styles while walking along the Hudson River in lower Manhattan over nearly 30 years, and much of what I have seen was jogging that was prone to cause injuries one way or another. (I can’t run anymore as I did in the photo because the Swine Flu shot of 1976 caused inflammations that damaged my knees.) I’ll address running styles in the next post.
Walking
Running puts a lot of extra strain on knees and ankles. Extra weight puts even more stress on legs. If you feel you are overweight or haven’t been active, I suggest you start by building up to walking 2 to 3 miles daily; the more vigorous, the better. Walking starts the body adapting, gets you outside (hopefully), puts much less strain on joints, and raises metabolism and burns calories.
The general rules of thumb are that 100 calories are burned when someone weighing 150 lbs. walks 1 mile, and burning 3500 calories burns off 1 pound of fat. So, walking 5 miles daily burns off 1 pound each week; if you don’t eat any more than usual, if you have the time and available places to do it, and if you find it pleasurable and safe enough to continue.
If you build up to walking 2 to 3 miles most days, that definitely is a good start; but, with that, cutting calories may be necessary too.
(Here is an alternative that might work for you a lot more quickly. Just run a bit, walk a bit, run, walk, etc. The object is to get breathing hard after a few of these. It’s great for cardiovascular health without excessive strain on legs, if you are comfortable running a bit; but running style still matters. I will cover that in the next post. Wait for it.)
EverGreens
Diet
By diet, I mean what you eat on a regular basis, not some crash course that you discontinue and then regain the weight that you had lost.
Do what works for you to cut out extra calories. I know of two techniques that have worked: counting calories, and stabilizing blood sugar to avoid ravenous hunger and “the shakes.”
Counting calories has the virtue of seeing what you ate that you really didn’t need or particularly want to eat. You can cut them out without suffering any hunger at all. Otherwise, cutting 500 calories per day would also lose one pound per week. Combine that with walking and you can get results either sooner, or with little or no hunger.
Stabilizing blood sugar works because ravenous hunger and “the shakes” occur when blood sugar drops rapidly. This usually happens when you eat a lot of carbs all at once. The pancreas pumps out insulin to remove sugar (and the sugar from digested starches) from the blood, but while you stop eating, the pancreas usually pumps out insulin for longer, and the insulin surge drives down blood sugar rapidly. This is assuming you are not diabetic. (A condition called hypoglycemia occurs when the insulin surge comes later, so at first blood sugar rises for some time, then drops precipitously. That’s my world.)
Eating less carbs at a time, and especially avoiding refined sugars and white bread, produces less insulin and less blood sugar disturbances. Eating small snacks when getting hungry can put just enough sugar into the blood to raise blood sugar without causing an insulin surge.
Eating a small piece of fruit with something that has protein and fat stretches out the absorption of sugar even more. Why? Because carbs are best absorbed in an alkaline stomach—i.e., in an empty stomach—but protein and fat stimulate production of hydrochloric acid in the stomach, thwarting rapid carb absorption. Eating half of a medium-sized apple with a few almonds, followed by the other half of apple 10 minutes later, works well for me. A small piece of 70% or 85% chocolate after the fruit satisfies me too.
Finally, the substance of what you eat should include whole-animal-sourced foods, such as whole organic yogurt, whole organic eggs, organic chicken and turkey, grass-fed beef and lamb, and organic pork (if available and allowed). These provide essential or conditionally essential amino acids (especially sulfur-containing methionine, cysteine, and taurine; plus carnitine, vital for burning fat) that cannot be gotten easily from plant-based foods; you also get iron, vitamin B12, and a host of other nutrients that go to building the body, repairing the body, and energizing the body. Of course, you know why I mention this: the decades-long war on fat and now carbon push people to cut out whole animal-sourced foods. I specify “organic” because the pesticide glyphosate, other pesticides, other synthetic additives, and coarse processing (such as applying chlorine bleach to disinfect inorganic chicken) add toxins and, in my experience, make the food taste too bad to eat.
Light to Medium Weights
This is not about building big bulky muscles. It’s about building muscle tone, and strengthening ligaments and tendons and joints without putting a heavy strain on them. It—often called strength training—also raises metabolism for a period of time that burns extra calories.
“Light” and “medium” are relative terms. They depend on a person’s strength and joint flexibility. They shouldn’t feel beyond your ability to handle without undue strain.
In this post, I’m writing about using free weighs—the weights you pick up from the floor. I prefer them because they work on more parts of the body than do weight machines, which really focus on very specific muscle groups. You can do free weights in the privacy of your home, anytime, without paying any extra fees; but if you prefer the social setting of health clubs and their machines, that ought to work too.
No weight should ever be taken lightly. Proper technique is necessary to avoid injury. I keep remembering the story of how big Bill “Moose” Skowron, the first baseman for the New York Yankees in the 1950s-1960s, injured his back by picking up an air conditioner. He was surely strong enough to lift its weight, but the balance was awkward and he flubbed it.
To pick up any free weight, first get it centered beneath you. Don’t reach to the side or in front. Bend only with the knees, not the back (though of course you will be bending at the hips too), and keep your head facing straight ahead or up. Grasp the weight with two hands (or one hand for each dumbbell), then lift with the legs to straighten up. This transmits the force of the weight to where your arms and legs can carry it safely. In contrast, facing down and bending down with the back arched down strains the back and can easily injure it.
If you are unfamiliar with weights, you may want someone watching you as you first lift weights to watch your posture and tell you if you are getting it right or wrong. If that means professionals at health clubs, so be it. It’ll be worth it.
I learned weightlifting from my uncle, who had been a champion weightlifter. He showed me five exercises. (All of the following exercises presume you have lifted the weight from the floor to get to a standing position). These are shoulder presses (lift to hold at shoulder height, push weight up from shoulder height), biceps curls (lift from arms in hanging position until palms are facing you and forearms are pointing up), leg squats (weight on back-of-neck shoulders, bend at knees to 1/3 bend or 1/2 bend; deeper puts undue strain on knees), neck shrugs (roll shoulders), and dead lifts (pick up from floor).
The standard pattern of exercise dates from the 1930s and can still be found being used or cited: Start with light weights so you can do ten repetitions of the exercise, wait five minutes, repeat 10 reps, wait 5 minutes, repeat 10 reps a third time. This is called “three sets of 10 reps.” If you can do that, then the next day you lift, increase the weight by some moderate amount and try to get 3 sets of 10 reps. If you can’t, stay at that weight and repeat the exercise every other day until you get back to 3 sets of 10 reps, then raise the weight again and repeat.
At Penn, in my room, I had a full set of weights given me by my uncle. I reasoned that what I wanted to help run the 440 yd. dash was snappy strength coupled with endurance. So I modified the above. I still did 3 sets, but I did 45 reps of 1/2 to 1/3 squats with 100 lbs. as fast as I could. When I went to Princeton graduate school, I learned that they were doing something similar (as many reps as could be done in 30 seconds), and it was cutting edge. I also did calf lifts—rising on my toes—with 100 lbs.; curls and shrugs and presses with 125 lbs. My peak weight with presses was 157 lbs.—the total of the weights I had—when I weighed 155 to 148 lbs.
For me, all of the above exercises (except peak weight presses) were medium weight levels. Now, 30 lbs. is medium, 40 lbs. is high, and I usually do one set of five to ten curls or presses, because my elbows are fragile. Also, instead of the curls I described above, I just lift the weights from a hanging position; it works the biceps but puts much less strain on my elbows. I do this primarily to keep my spinal vertebrae from thinning, and to maintain some muscle tone.
For beginning runners, I think the 1/3 squats and calf-lifts are best for legs, while presses and curls build upper body strength. And higher than 10 reps builds endurance.
People also do calisthenics: pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, etc. These complement the weights but don’t really replace them. Weight-bearing exercises serve to strengthen bones and joints too.
A word of caution, or for whom it may concern: Heavy-weight training (especially with few reps) builds muscles much faster than it strengthens ligaments and tendons. So athletes who engage in heavy-weight training can get to the point where their muscles pull too hard on their ligaments and tendons, resulting in various joint injuries—especially for baseball players, because of all the power-arm motions involved in pitching and swinging.
That’s why I prefer lighter weights at a higher number of reps, quickly done.
R&R and Sleep
The whole point in exercising to get fit or “get into shape” is to stress the body enough to cause micro breakdowns or chemical markers of stress so that the body then goes into repair mode, building back better. (No political reference intended) You then need time to recover and heal: via sleep, relaxation, and satisfaction (R&R).
Exercising when you are already tired, or stressed, or when you lack good sleep is a good way to get injured, as the breakdowns from previous exercise hadn’t healed yet. BUT Doing nothing does no good either. Light versions of your regular exercise then serve to help blood circulate to heal the old stresses, keep the body alert to the need to rebuild, and yet don’t do enough stressing to cause further damage. The lightest version is to take one day off or jog just lightly after particularly heavy workouts or races.
No gain WITH pain. No gain without discomfort.
From the above, you can see that pushing hard when in pain is not a good idea. Pain indicates injury; pushing hard then just worsens the injury. Injury-caused pain doesn’t go away when you stop exercising; well, it may stop while you are inactive, but it picks up right away after you start moving again.
Discomfort is something that goes away when you stop and you recover. Then you can go again without discomfort until you push enough to get new discomfort. This is the kind of stress that is real but sufficiently limited so that it stimulates the body to rebuild.
The Staircase Pattern of Improvement
This is my own observation, though for all I know it is a well-known, established fact.
Progress in training seems to go in steps.
It’s as if at first, the body resists changing, not wanting to expend energy adapting to something that won’t recur. This can be discouraging as you keep training but seem to make no progress. Eventually, however, the body gets the message that change is necessary and it starts building. Naturally enough, it strengthens the weakest link in your performance. Then progress seems to come in a rush, only to stall again as the next weakest link gets stressed, until that too builds and you progress rapidly again. Etc.
One corollary of this is the risk of injury when you are having a “best” day, when everything is running at peak performance as you are pushing to the max. Then the next weakest link gets stressed beyond the level of mere training, and injury can result.
I have in mind the day Ron Guidry (NY Yankees, pitcher, 1978) was overwhelmingly dominant and had struck out 15 batters in 8 innings. As he and the crowd went for 18 strikeouts in 9 innings, the Yankee announcer, Frank Messer I believe, carefully expressed concern that Guidry might be putting unnecessary strain on his arm. At that point in the season, if memory serves, Guidry had 16 wins and one loss. He was merely superb after that. While he did finish the season with 25 wins and 3 losses, he never was as unbelievably dominant as he was that half season.
Next up, good running style.
Good Health to You!