How to run without hurting your knees

Before running, you must do some warm-up exercises, which can make the body's muscles excited and not feel so stiff. You should also wear running shoes that suit you. If they are not suitable for you, you may fall while running and easily injure your knees. Let's learn how to run without injuring your knees.

1. Control the amount of running: There are different opinions about the incremental amount of running, such as no more than 10% or 5% per week. However, each person has great individual differences, and the running volume base is also different. Simply using percentages to control is only a statistical result and is not very reasonable. That’s why how you feel during each run is so important. This feeling is the degree of tiredness of your muscles and body.

After running for a while, I can feel tiredness more accurately than before. The daily temperature, physical condition, diet and other factors will cause the body to become tired at different points. When the leg muscles are tired, in addition to slowing down the speed, a very important point is that the control of the steps and landing will become worse. The more tired the muscles are, the greater the impact force on the meniscus, and when it exceeds its buffering range, it will damage the femoral head. Many injuries to the meniscus and femoral head are irreparable.

For experienced runners, during the pre-race period when the running volume increases, they should first feel whether it is easier to run the same amount as last week. If so, they should stop at any point in the excess running volume if they feel they cannot control their running posture. If you don't feel any easier than last week, don't choose to increase your mileage. After increasing running volume or high-intensity training for 3-4 weeks, you should design a one-week interval week to reduce the running volume to about 70% of the peak and allow for adequate recovery and rest. Then continue to increase your running volume and training intensity.

For beginners, it is more reasonable to increase the running volume once every two weeks. It is equivalent to one week of improvement and one week of consolidating the results. The amount of increase does not have to be limited to a deliberate proportion. Pay attention to your body and stop when you feel your landing getting heavier or you feel pressure in your knees.

2. Reduce speed training: With the same amount of running, higher speed means greater impact force and a greater possibility of damage to the knees. At the same time, at higher speeds, the running posture will be distorted in order to lengthen the stride and increase the speed. The legs unconsciously do not bend at all when landing, and the muscle buffering ability when the joints are bent is lost, and the impact force is directly transmitted to the knees. This is also the reason why many novice runners get injured in the first two months of running when they run very little. Although the running distance is only 2 or 3 kilometers per day. However, when he ran as fast as he could, his muscles were not strong enough to protect him, and the huge impact force injured his knee. For long-distance running and endurance running, even for an experienced runner, speed training generally does not exceed 10% of the total training volume. And there is usually only one interval speed training per week. Beginner runners don't need to arrange speed training at all. One could even jokingly suggest that runners with marathon times outside of 3 hours and 30 minutes don't need to do speed training. As long as you accumulate a reasonable amount of training and arrange your rest well, your results will improve steadily.

3. Adjust your running posture: The impact of running posture on the knees has been described in detail in the NHK documentary "Marathon Army". Properly controlling the running posture allows Patrick Macao (marathon world record holder) to reduce knee impact by more than 25% compared to Japan's top marathon runners. Although ordinary people cannot achieve the amazingly coordinated running posture of Ma Kao. However, the postures of ordinary runners that are most harmful to the knees are as follows: First, the foot lands in front of the knee, causing the knee joint to straighten or even lock (every time you stand up, you can find that the knee joint seems to be stuck in the final stage, which is a natural mechanism to increase standing stability). At this time, a considerable forward force is fed back through the ground and impacts the knee joint. Therefore, when landing, control the position of your ankles so that they are directly below your knees as much as possible, or slightly behind them. The bend at the knees will provide excellent cushioning.

In the article, we have learned how to run without hurting the knees. The main thing is not to pay attention to the speed. You must control your running speed and adjust your running posture. If the posture is wrong, your knee joints will become stiff.