It's officially marathon season, and if you've left your house before 9am on a Saturday morning recently you've probably seen the hordes of runners grinding out the miles in the cold/rain/snow. You might even be one of the runners yourself, and if you are, we salute you! This blog is inspired by the marathoners, but the information is for anything who runs, jogs, trots, or walks. Specifically, this blog is about how strength training, especially at your hips and core, can help you prevent those pesky overuse injuries.  Let's dive right in.

So why do runners need to strength train? Because running is essentially a long series of single leg jumps and you need strong muscles to both propel your body through the air and absorb impact as you land. Even if you're walking, you're still striking with your foot, transferring weight side to side, and spending about 40% of the time (depending on who you ask and how fast you're going) on one foot. If your muscles can't handle the impact, your joints take up the slack. Strong hips and a strong core prevent foot, knee, and back overuse injuries in both runners and walkers. 

"So, Dr. Drew," you might be asking, "does this mean I have to get a gym membership and lift weights all the time? Half the reason I run/walk is because I hate the gym!" Well you're in luck! You can strength train without weights in your living room if you want to. Here's a short list of my favorite body weight exercises for runners:

1) Lunges

Lunges are my favorite runner exercise by a long shot, and here's why: they mimic running position, they train you in a deeper range of motion than you need to run, and they are incredibly modifiable. The split leg stance of a lunge is the same position that you need to be strong while running/walking, and since you have to do both sides separately, it's much harder to cheat than with a squat. You're weaknesses are there for the world to see, but since you're just in your living room anyway, who cares! Besides, that's the whole point here, to improve. Secondly, I like that they improve your strength through a broad range of motion. You'll (hopefully) never bring your knee all the way to the ground while you're running, but in case that ever does happen, you'll be ready because you'll be a master lunger. Lastly, you can do anything you want to modify them (read "make them harder"). Standing, walking, with rotation, hands over head, lateral lunge, with weights, lunge jumps, etc. Whatever you need to train, the lunge is there for you. 

2) Split Squats

I like split squats for the same reasons I like lunges: split stance, no cheating, broad range of motion. They serve basically the same purpose except they do a little bit better job isolating the front foot. Sometimes people can cheat during lunges and use their strong foot to propel their weak foot even when the weak foot should be doing more of the lifting. Split squats essentially take the rear leg out of the equation but putting it at a significant leverage disadvantage. That's good news, because it means we can really improve each leg on its own. It's hard to run on just one leg, so we need to make sure you have 2 good ones, not just 1.5.

3) Dead Bug

This is a particularly difficult exercise for a lot of people, so I'm going to give you some progressions for this one. If you can do this exercise right without cheating, you're well on your way to winning marathons, or at least finishing a 5k without hurting your back. Step one is getting good at pelvic control. Here is a video (skip to about 1 minute if you want) that explains posterior pelvic tilts, it's easier to see than to read. Once you've got that down, try just moving one arm at a time while holding your hips in place. Then try one leg at a time. Then you can try the whole shebang. Dead bugs are great because it makes you control your core while you move the rest of your body, which is kind of a big deal in running. It helps improve abdominal strength, body awareness, and coordination. Hands up if that sounds like it would help you!

Those aren't the only exercises that are good for runners and walkers, but it's certainly a good start. If you can have strong hips and a strong core, you're doing the rest of your body a great service. So get out there and let your legs take you somewhere, just make sure they're good and strong first.