Running reveals your fragility.
Years ago an overweight friend of mine started running (v.slowly). During the second run he hurt his back, so he stopped running because it was bad for him.
Someone tries to sprint after 20years of not running fast - they pull a hamstring…“sprinting is dangerous at my age”.
Another person resumes running after a decade off, within two weeks they get achilles tendonitis, so they stop running and take up rucking.
Is the problem with running? No.
The problem is the body carrying ‘silent’ fragilities or injuries which running reveals. (5)
- The overweight person with the bad back.
- The deconditioned individual who falls apart from the dynamic effort of sprinting.
- The person who rucks or cycles because they can’t run - a bad knee, lack of endurance, etc
There are millions of people over 30 who can’t or won’t run - not because running is bad
but that if you have a silent injury, a joint problem, chronic muscle strains, too much weight, stiff degraded tendons -
running will mercilessly showcase them.(5)
If you can no longer run (especially, run fast),
don’t dress it up as
“running is bad for someone of my age, that’s why I cycle, ruck, walk…”
what you are really signaling is your body has degraded so much that you are avoiding an activity which tells you as much.
Sprinting - fast movements
Source: TW
Old age: Key Performance indicator (KPI) = the ability to sprint.
The good thing about slow running (or rucking) is you can still do it when you’re injured, dodgy achilles, hamstring, joints, etc. This retains a certain level of fitness.
The bad thing about slow running is you can be chronically injured for years but as you can still run slow you never attend to the weaknesses and frailties you have. Plus your stride is short, you have little power & you are tight.
Your physiological engine may be good (to a point) but your ‘chassis’ is poor - your tendons, ligaments, muscles, joints cannot generate or tolerate dynamic activity.
Go outside now - warm-up, then sprint 100m as fast as you can. If you are older and haven’t sprinted, or done any dynamic activity) for years years, there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll get injured. You chassis has degraded.
The ability to do fast repeatable dynamic movements is an indicator of your physical robustness. If you only train slow in the gym, ruck, walk, run slow, cycle or generally live in a zone 1 or 2 world. Your chassis loses the ability to tolerate the dynamic loading, stretching and pulling of sprinting. It is impossible to sprint at full-pelt even if you’re slightly injured, so you hide in ‘slow-twitch world’.
As you age it’s the extremes or tails which go first, then the moderate becomes harder. Retaining the ability to sprint means you need to fortify the chassis no just concentrate on engine.(4)
Note: Don’t go out and sprint, if you haven’t done it for years. But it world prove my point.