Reddit reviews Anatomy for Runners: Unlocking Your Athletic Potential for Health, Speed, and Injury Prevention

This all looks fine to me. HR training it super simple, you just want your heart rate in that zone. I don't think taking breaks is going to have a big impact at all.

Objectively, the best thing you can do is lose some weight so running becomes feasible. That 10 mile walk is a great idea, but it isn't really training your aerobic system.

You might also want to add in some "extra" stuff. For ultrarunning balance, strength, and coordination are all essential. There's tons of resources out there to help you build a program, but I'd recommend mixing it in now. If you can commit to it before you start running you have a really good chance of avoiding injuries.

I'll briefly go over some crosstraining basics, these are just my opinions. Most athletes are good runners, but most runners aren't good athletes. IMO this simple fact explains why 80% of runners encounter an injury sometime in their career. If you want to race ultras the safest way to do so is to start treating yourself like an athlete.

1. For strength training, go low reps high weight. Runners don't need tons of muscle mass, but the muscle they have needs to be strong. This can be dangerous if you lift without proper form so with movements that feel easy. I wouldn't encourage you to jump into squats and deadlifts if those feel uncomfortable. The leg press machine, bulgarian split squats, weighted lunges, and calf raises are good examples of simpler, less stressful movements. You don't need to do a ton of sets of these, or even do that many of them. I normally lift 1-2 times a week, doing three sets of three exercises for 3-5 reps.
   
2. Hate weightlifting? No problem, bodyweight exercises are also awesome. David Roche's 5 minute mountain workout is a great example of an unweighted routine that works your balance, coordination, and musculature. I would strongly recommend working some bodyweight stuff into your routine. Anything on one leg is awesome, anything involving squatting is great, and anything that challenges your core is great. The more muscle groups you need to recruit the better
   
3. Actually finding good exercises can be daunting. A good starting place is Jay dicharry's anatomy for runners. It'll help give you a handle on the strengths and weaknesses of your body, and start you down the path to improving them.
   
   This is an ongoing process that'll follow you across your career as a runner, but stick with it and I guarantee it'll pay dividends.
   
   One other note. Because you haven't started running yet you haven't had a chance to make the mistakes most novice runners run into. I'll list those out briefly, this is just what I've seen in myself and other runners.
   
   

• Slow cadence. I was running with slow cadence for years, and it caused all sorts of problems with my stride. I was bouncing too much which stressed out my calfs, I was leaning to the right which stressed out my quads ect. Cadence is a personal thing, but generally you should try to stay above 170 steps a minute.
  
• Bad programming. The number one way runners get injured is too much too soon. Adjust your weekly mileage slowly and be patient. The best way to get faster is to slowly build up your mileage without getting injured. You're doing a ton of aerobic training now but that's not running training. When you actually start running I would recommend doing couch to 5k, then taking it super slow from there. You have a whole running career infront of you!
  
• Poor glute engagement. Buy that book from dicharry, it'll go into better detail on this than I can. The long and short of it is many runners don't engage their glutes when they run, shifting more work to the calves and quads. This slows them down and makes them way more injury prone.
  
  Good luck!

For the latter, I would highly recommend Jay Dicharry's Anatomy For Runners . There's nothing "trail-specific" about it, but I've found it really helpful as I navigate a return to the trails post injury. It's got a great set of tests to identity problem areas and recommends excellent exercises--several of which my PT also suggested. Beyond that, a lot of his writing about biomechanics and muscle memory was really illuminating and has helped me think more about how to run smarter vs _harder. The one thing it's sorely missing is a solid index, but beyond that it's an excellent addition to any runner's library.

Switching to forefoot striking will be uncomfortable at first if you've been heel striking. It'll require muscles/parts of your leg that weren't used before. They'll strengthen with time. I don't think I'm a better PT than yours but I want to recommend Anatomy for Runners. The book will help you understand biomechanics and your body better so hopefully you can find out why your injuries are occurring. Good luck.

Mucho love, my dear. I'm sorry that you are still in pain. We are here for you! If AR is too much - please, please - you can always DM me!

Have I recommended this book to you? You should totally check it out if I hadn't yet.

Deep breath.

Do you get any tenderness in the lower abdominals/hip flexors tied to the tendinopathy?

The adductor is a super super frustrating one. Been there and I feel you.

BUT when you do come back and start feeling strong again - you WILL be kicking ass again!! WE LOVE YOU SAIRO!!!!!

I'd recommend checking out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Runners-Unlocking-Potential-Prevention/dp/1620871599

It has an overview of the mobility needed for running, along with self-assessments to determine whether you need to work on your mobility for your running.

/u/caseycaseydillah

I do the weights at the gym one day/week but most of my strength and core training is bodyweight because BALANCE is where the strength comes from (see LeBron article below). One leg bridges, straight leg deadlifts, etc are a couple of the exercises runners should be doing to strengthen their drive.

You can find most of these exercises in https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Runners-Unlocking-Potential-Prevention/dp/1620871599. It helps to get some bands and maybe an exercise ball. If you can get a couple of dumbells that helps too.

Heres's some other great bodyweight exercises for runners, specifically for strengthening glutes: https://www.popsugar.com.au/fitness/Workout-Sleeping-Butt-Syndrome-44485654

And this one is interesting. LeBron James is one of the strongest, fittest guys in the game but he had some injuries and performance issues to fix. This video shows some of the body weight training he trainer put him on using bands and exercise balls. And he says this is what turned everything around for him. http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/22778062/how-lebron-james-fixed-back-track-play-all-82-games-nba

.. and he paid the former Navy Seal $1 million US for this training! That says a lot about the value of bodyweight training. :)

that. sucks.

check out this book.

the title is misleading but the information within is amazing. the authors premise is - rest doesnt solve the problem...it helps the symptom to pass. find the problem and strengthen / retrain to actually fix the problem.

the author is not a quack and his book is filled with great stability and strengthening exercises that will help the reader to run better.

I had a similar injury that took a very long time to heal. What I think finally cleared it up was mainly two things:

1. Taking better care of what I put in my body. Started eating a lot more vegetables and taking a vitamin D supplement. Source: Harvard's Nutrition Source
   
   
2. Changing my form and doing the exercises (mostly hip work) to help facilitate that. For form, I shortened my stride, shifted my foot contact from forefoot to more midfoot, and increased my stride frequency a little. Source: Jay Dicharry
   
   Don't worry about drinking milk. Calcium probably isn't the problem. And I'm really not convinced that soft surfaces help much. (If someone has some real data on this, I'd love to see it.) I think it's at least something like 98% running form and having a strong enough musculoskeletal system to handle training.

I’d guess your biomechanics are off. Give this a read and what you learn. It offers a solid self analysis section that can help point out where you lacking strength, flexibility, and range of motion while providing a suggested means of helping each of those things.


https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Runners-Unlocking-Potential-Prevention/dp/1620871599

Just another point of view. From my reading in Anatomy for Runners, it is a common misconception that rotating shoes will prolong their life. As the book states, the only reason to rotate shoes is if you run so often that the shoes don't dry between runs.

Look at Anatomy of Running
Very good example of what happens when a qualified person writes a book on running.

While your down on RnR grab a copy of Anatomy for Runners. It's a great read for any runner and has lots of exercises that you can do while you are not running because of injury or other reasons.

I think you implicitly equating pace times with worthwhile knowledge is a bit superficial (which perhaps is why some feathers got ruffled), but as you encountered in your previous thread, people telling you simply to focus on training/fitness and forget about stride length are simply incorrect. Yes, stride length, just like cadence, may be misleading or even unhelpful taken in isolation, but as part of a holistic program (as one can infer you're working on), these can offer meaningful gains.

I've read about 500 pp. recently from two expert-level books, Jay Dicharry's Anatomy for Runners and Running Rewired. My wife first heard him at a USATF Level III distance running clinic, then we went to his lab in OR. He works with Olympians, Ironman champs, etc. etc. Anyway, he says stride length boils down to two things:
* Increased muscle fiber recruitment. IIRC, this comes from plyos.
* Increased muscle size and strength. (From weight training.)

He makes the point (and I think this is really what you're getting at) that most runners will get more gains from doing strength workouts dedicated to helping the above, rather than just doing another run. All that to say, I'd highly commend both of those books to you (as you are clearly serious enough to have the appetite to wade through; AFR especially is not beach reading), but Running Rewired has more targeted workouts per your question. Cheers!