Are you having pain with running? We have some helpful guidance for you. In this blog, we will show you ways to stay healthy for running, whether you are a leisure runner or are training for a race.

First things first, the most common injuries we see in the clinic in our runner population include hip, knee, and foot/ankle pain. The important thing to note is that these joints and muscle groups all work together, especially with single leg loading like in running. You can’t JUST look at where is hurting. The reason why is that majority of the time, there are issues above or below that are causing you to hurt there.

For example, let’s say you are having knee pain while running. The majority of the time, knee pain isn’t actually a result of a knee issue. We see so much hip weakness that can contribute to this. So we address it all!

Hip, quad, calf, and foot/ankle strength and mobility are vital for runners and athletes in general. If you aren’t strength training along with running, you will most likely eventually have some sort of nagging pain or injury down the road. Plus, strength training can improve your running quality, efficiency, and times. If you want to be a better runner, it is time to make sure you are keeping the right areas mobile and strong! We will dive into some of our favorite exercises that keep our runners healthy!

Like we said, hip strengthening is vital for the loading your leg performs with every step with running and to help protect other areas of your body including the back, knee, and foot. Here are videos of a few of our favorite “go-to” hip exercises.

Next, it is important not to forget about our quad strength. You still need this to be able to run effectively and prevent injury as well. Below are videos of a couple of our favorite single-leg quad strengthening exercises.

Finally, it is very important to have calf, foot, and ankle strength for running since that is your point of contact when you strike the ground. It is also important to have ankle mobility as well, especially ankle dorsiflexion. These videos are of easy ways to strengthen your calf and ankle as well as improve your ankle mobility.

We hope this helped you understand the benefits of staying healthy and strengthening all aspects of your lower body in order to prevent injury or further pain when you run. Our tip is to have a little running warm-up that may consist of one of each of these categories we discussed, and make time to get good at the other exercises we showed as well. There are SO many things you can do, but these should help you get started!

One other thing we discuss with our patients is that we have to calm things down in order to build things up. Manual therapy, including dry needling and cupping, can help calm your pain down in order to perform these exercises.

If you are having pain with running, need a reset, need manual therapy, and/or need help with what you should be doing to get back into running pain free, schedule with us an appointment with us. We would love to assist you!

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Guide to Running Pain Free