RUNschool

Why Movement matters | Written by Mark Blomeley

Movement is one of those things that we can easily take for granted until it’s gone or impaired. Think about it, if you’re injured and unable to walk around properly, you’re in a constant state of thinking about the next painful move you need to make. Suddenly the things you were doing last week are hard or in some cases even impossible.

This is exactly why movement matters.

As runners we place an amazing overemphasis on one particular movement, running. Our goal is usually to run as much and as often as possible, when this particular movement is impacted we often let it impact our happiness.

Unfortunately when we neglect other movements it impacts on our entire musculoskeletal system. What most runners do is spend 8 hours a day at a desk and 1 hour a day running and very little movement outside of this apart from maybe some core work.

The issue is that this was not the way the human body was made to work.

We were made to run, jump, accelerate, decelerate, squat, lunge, hinge, push, and pull, all in different directions.

When we neglect to train in this way our musculoskeletal system becomes weak in places and neural pathways become inhibited. The result is that we run in poor positions, have tight muscles and our system doesn’t function properly.

So really, by choosing to not move the way that we were meant to, we are impacting our running. We are choosing to be less efficient in the way our body moves and we are putting ourselves at injury risk.

I know the tendency is to think that he who does the most kms running wins. However, times are changing, we are finding more effective ways of being running fit. One of these ways is reducing running volume and using movement to assist us to move more efficiently and therefore improving our running.

MTC at Falls Creek : Photo by RT
MTC at Falls Creek : Photo by RT

So, the take away today is, start strength training and I don’t mean machines. Start squatting, deadlifting, pushing and pulling with the upper body and doing more body weight movement. Also, train smarter, don’t do junk kms when you could be doing something more effective.

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Mark Blomeley is a strength and conditioning coach with 10 years experience in the sports and fitness industry. Currently in Brisbane, he is a specialist strength and conditioning coach for runners and current strength and conditioning coach to international standard runners.