Run Well by Juliet McGrattan (reading books for 5 year olds .TXT) 📕

glide freely against each other again. The medical term for this is myofascial release.

In addition, foam rolling may warm up muscles before a work-out by causing friction and after a run it may speed up recovery by increasing blood flow. There’s also a theory that the benefits aren’t just due to myofascial release and may be in part or fully attributable to the effect that rolling has on pain receptors. Information is transmitted to the brain when the nerves are stimulated due to temporarily increased pain. Messages then come back to the nervous system to relax the muscles and that feeling of release is felt. Some therapists argue that foam rolling should not be painful and that if it is then you’re doing it wrong. They advise not rolling directly over ligaments, joints and bones and sticking to more gentle rolling over large muscles groups, such as the glutes and hamstrings. This means that rolling up and down directly over that IT band isn’t a good idea. There’s so much we still don’t know about foam rolling and its popularity has spread faster than the evidence for it.

Bones and joints

Q Will running damage my knees?

A The million-dollar question and the reason many people give for not wanting to run! To answer it in one sentence: a recreational runner of a healthy weight, who trains sensibly, allows adequate recovery, runs with good biomechanics and isn’t pre-disposed to osteoarthritis does not need to worry about damaging their knees.

Knees are cleverly designed to absorb impact, keep moving smoothly and to repair any stresses or damage that comes their way. Bones respond well to impact and weight-bearing exercise can increase bone strength. Maintaining a healthy weight (and running can help you achieve that) will mean that the load placed on the knee joint isn’t excessive. Training sensibly and building up your running miles gradually will make sure the joint and the muscles around it have time to strengthen and adapt. Ensuring you have rest days and time for recovery will allow for joint repair processes. As you get older, you’ll need to prioritise more time for recovery because repair processes slow with age.

If you run with poor technique or an injury which alters your posture and running gait, then you risk potentially damaging your knees due to stresses being put on the knees in a direction which they were not designed for. While the knee can cope with an awful lot, excessive miles with abnormal biomechanics over time may lead to damage.

Whether or not you will develop significant, symptomatic osteoarthritis (OA) in your knees has more to do with your genetics than how much you run. The truth is that we are all different. There’s no magic number for how many miles we can run and how much recovery we need, and there’s insufficient evidence to say that running will damage your knees. Remember: you are more likely to have problems with your knees if you are inactive than if you are a runner.

An interesting study done in 2019 took 82 middle-aged adults who were running their first marathon and scanned their knees six months before and two weeks after their marathon. During the four-month training programme 11 dropped out, but 71 went on to run their marathons. Six months before the marathon, most of them had some changes to their knee structures linked with the onset of osteoarthritis, even though they didn’t have any symptoms. After the marathon there was an improvement in some of these changes in the ends of the tibia and femur, and a worsening of the changes in the cartilage of the patella. Any worsening was still asymptomatic and we don’t know in the longer term whether these changes persisted or improved. Potentially, if we could counteract that patella damage in some way, perhaps with injury prevention exercises, then we could say that middle-aged runners who start running a marathon could protect their knees from future osteoarthritis.

Did you know?

There are over 206 bones in the adult body. Children have more, but many bones fuse together as they grow.

Q I’m overweight. Will running harm my joints?

A Running places much more impact onto a joint than walking. Joints are well-designed to carry load and absorb impact, but there does come a point at which excess weight will put strain on a joint and potentially lead to damage. Some exercise will always be better than no exercise and you are more likely to have joint problems if you are inactive. Being overweight doesn’t mean you shouldn’t run, but you do need to be careful, because it’s a high-impact activity and people who are overweight are at higher risk of osteoarthritis. Running can help you reach and maintain a healthy weight, if that’s your goal, but not every overweight person runs to lose weight and it’s important to acknowledge that. You do, however, need to take care of your joints to prevent damage and injury. You can do this by building up your distances gradually, and allowing rest and recovery time between runs to enable joint and muscle repair. Running with a good technique, and doing strength and conditioning exercises, is important too. Don’t ignore twinges. You are asking a lot of your body so become very self-aware, listen to it and take prompt action to avoid long-term problems.

Q I’ve got some osteoarthritis in my knees. Am I OK to keep running?

A Being told you have osteoarthritis (OA) by your doctor can be very upsetting, particularly if you are a runner, but it may not be as bad as you think. First of all, it’s important to know that what is seen on an x-ray may not correlate with what you feel. You can have quite significant pain from your knees and have an almost normal x-ray. Conversely, you can have marked arthritic changes on your x-ray and not experience any pain from your knees at all. How your knees actually feel is more important and