Why Do You Run? Think About It

This was the joke of the day that appeared on my calendar this past week.

Two men were hiking through the forest when they heard a bear approaching. One man dropped his hiking gear and searched through it until he found his running shoes. Watching the man put on the running shoes, the other man said, “What are you doing? You can’t outrun that bear!” The man said, “I don’t have to outrun him. I just have to outrun you.”

Whether you run for your health, to lose weight, or the joy of taking it on the road, calling yourself a runner is a badge you wear with pride. I know I certainly do!

Take a moment and ask yourself why you run or fitness walk.

Here are the answers I get most often when I ask women this question.

*It’s good for my health
*I want to lose weight/control my weight
*Anyone can run, so there’s nothing I have to learn
*It helps me handle my stress
*I like to run and like the way I feel when I’m done.

I’m thinking for most of us those answers would rank high on the list. So let’s consider each of these answers and whether or not they are indeed the benefits of running.

1. It’s good for my health and helps me handle stress: maybe, maybe not.

Aerobic training increases adrenal stress, which can make you fatter and produce other undesirable health consequences. Adrenal fatigue is a very important factor which I’ll address more in depth in another piece.

For right now though, know that when you do too much continuous aerobic exercise the adrenal glands are stressed in a way that disrupts your hormonal balance causing adrenal fatigue.

This leads to tiredness, allergies, frequent colds and flus, arthritis, anxiety, reduced memory, insomnia, feeling worn out and the INABILITY to lose weight even after extensive effort.

So while you are gaining cardiovascular and respiratory benefits, which I believe are the health benefits we think of when we say “we run for the health benefits,” please be aware that TOO much of a good thing can be stressful.

Remember, being fit and being healthy are not the same.

It’s important to bring a level of self awareness to your running so you know when you are dipping into an unhealthy stressful state.

Also, when thinking of how to blend health and fitness, think of becoming generally athletic and then taking that general athleticism into whatever exercise or sport you play.

In other words, you want to move well, REALLY well.

The idea is to be active throughout your life and discover your own pathway to enjoying a physically active lifestyle.

Adapting a philosophy towards sports/movement and health/fitness like the one I’m suggesting might take a paradigm shift for you. I encourage you, however, to be open to what I’m saying.

Running has its place but it’s far from the only activity we should be doing if we’re looking to be healthy and handle our stress!

2. Best way to lose weight and burn fat: NOPE.

Not steady state running at least. Going for miles and miles or for hours and hours is not the best way to burn fat.

Will you burn calories? Of course.

Want to burn fat? Listen up.

Remember, we are talking about CONTINUOUS aerobic exercise called LSD (long slow distance running) or steady state cardio.

There are other ways to train that are more effective and take less time.

We unfortunately have been brainwashed with the idea that to burn fat you have to do continuous aerobic work.

It is not the most effective choice and I think it’s a good idea to match what you choose to do with the reason for doing it.

In order to lose fat you need to stoke the body’s furnace to burn up fat reserves. To do this you need intense oxygen-depriving anaerobic exercise.

This does two things:
1-It increases the percentage of calories and fat burned as compared to the percentage of carbohydrates burned.
2-It raises your metabolic rate, which helps you burn off even more calories when you are at rest. This is called EPOC, and we’ll go into this more in a minute.

Intensity (% of your max Heart Rate) is what’s important in the number of calories burned per minute. The kind of running that is most effective for fat loss is called interval training.

You alternate minutes of high intensity exercise with low to moderate intensity exercise. You will more effectively burn fat and improve both aerobic and anaerobic fitness.

EPOC stands for excess post-workout oxygen consumption, and some in the fitness field assign great meaning to it, so it’s something you should be aware of.

There is a higher increase in caloric expenditure that occurs during the EPOC phase after resistance or anaerobic exercise versus aerobic exercise. And the EPOC over the 12-24 hour period following your exercise session can be from 10-150 calories.

Not a huge number but worth noting.

Also, let’s consider something else with steady state running and fat burning/calorie expenditure.

If you are economical and mechanically efficient when you run, you will expend LESS calories than if you are unskilled and utilize unnecessary movements during physical activity.

At first you might think, great I don’t (run, swim bike ) well so I’ll burn more calories, but remember, inefficiencies increase musculoskeletal stress and lead to overuse injuries.

So it’s an interesting Catch-22.

Though it takes time to develop efficient running mechanics, your economy will improve over time and you’ll be able to prolong the activity and get a greater total energy expenditure, but that means running for longer and longer time periods.

This may not be what you want: longer runs to burn the same number of calories.

As for a fitness view on all this let’s look at what Charles Poliquin, a well known strength and conditioning coach, has to offer when he talks about why aerobic work can be counterproductive. He includes many of the things we have already mentioned.

-Continuous aerobic work plateaus after 8 weeks of training so anything more is counterproductive.

-Aerobic training worsens your power locally and systemically, making you slower. This is important if you play team sports needing speed or jumping power.

-Aerobic training increases oxidative stress which can accelerate aging. Oxidation is a process that forms free radicals in the body.

Normally we use antioxidants to neutralize them. If there is an excessive build up due to excessive aerobics your body will be challenged to handle all the free radicals. This will change your metabolism and can accelerate aging.

-Aerobic training increases body fat in stressed individuals by contributing additional stress.

Again, stress to an already stressed organism actually adds body fat as it messes with your hormone balance.

-Aerobic training worsens testosterone/cortisol ratios which impede your ability to add fat burning lean muscle. Adding lean muscle will help increase the caloric expenditure that you need to lose fat.

3. Anyone can run, so there’s nothing I have to learn…NOT!

Yes, running will burn calories, and you can ease joint stress and move with less effort if you take the time to learn how.

And running can be learned by anyone. It involves understanding physics, physiology and your anatomy.

Too often though, what I see published in articles is something that says “if you can walk, you can run.”

This is not the case and I surely would not want most of the people I see walking to take their walk into a run!

Everyone needs exercise, yet why do so many people interpret this to mean all you need to do is RUN.

Unfortunately, I see too many people who have never given credence to the idea that it is important to learn good biomechanics for running.

I see bobbers, swayers, shufflers, prancers and clompers, all of whom think they are doing something good for themselves by running.

A lot of people out there running look miserable and in pain and as I often say, “Running is something we do in the name of good health that can make us miserable.”

Biomechanics–technique–how we move as runners–is easy to address. It is, after all, under our control. Yet it is often forgotten.

Runners need to understand it’s not just about WHY you run, but also about HOW you run.

The injury rate amongst runners is alarming and changes all the time so I won’t give you an exact number. I can say that I’ve never read a study that quoted less than 50% of all runners having had an injury during the year.

Learning how to run with correct form will make running less punishing so your fitness efforts won’t be constantly derailed by injury.

You can be comfortable while you run!

Correct running form is not second nature for most of us, and contrary to what many people think, it is not just stepped-up walking.

What I wanted to do in writing this was to have us look at the exercise we do, in this case running, and ask ourselves why we are doing it, and are we in fact getting the results we seek.

Mindlessly doing anything, and particularly running, can do just as much harm as good and we need to know the difference between whether running is helping us or hurting us.

shelli