This episode is about knee surgery for runners, the considerations, topics for thought. It will not tell you when you need surgery. I’m not a doctor. It doesn’t bash knee surgery, not at all, but it is food for thought, things to consider, if knee surgery may be in your future, or if a medical professional is recommending it for you.
First, I need to cover some critical points.
For as long as running has been a popular sport, some people have believed that running is bad for your knees. Let me put that rumor to rest. Running is NOT bad for most people’s knees. Some people believe it will ruin your knees. This has been studied and evaluated and researched and disproven.
Now, some people do have problems with their knees, especially women, because of the way our bodies are made. My point is that a blanket statement that running ruins your knees is entirely wrong.
That said, I’ve worked with many runners with knee problems. As I mention in this episode, the great majority had injured their knees in some way, years ago, usually playing sports in high school or college. In those cases, there’s not much I can do. In most cases, though, I’ve found that when people do two things, the pain is either largely alleviated or goes away, completely. Those two things are:
- Strengthening all the other muscles. The muscles around the knee, stabilize it; if they’re weak, then the knee is at risk. Other times, though, strengthening the hips or core muscles is what makes the difference.
- Correcting form. Almost always when I get these people to run with smaller steps, making sure their body, their center of gravity is over their foot when it hits the ground, there is no more problem.
Let’s say this didn’t work for you, then you may be one of many runners looking at knee surgery. In this episode, I relate the experiences of some of my friends as well as my own experience and provide some insight that I think will be helpful.
Podcast (mfr): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS
If you haven’t run off road – or on trails – I hope this episode will convince you to give it a try. I explain the many of excellent reasons why you should run trails, and I explain how to get started.
Most runners want to get faster. Not everyone can afford to hire a coach, and not everyone has time to train for a marathon, but most runners hope to set new PR’s on a regular basis. This is absolutely possible, but you need to know how to direct your time. Most people have full-time jobs. You probably do, or you’re a full-time parent. Your time is limited; so, you need to know the best most efficient way to spend your running training time. 
It’s the little things that often have the greatest impact, and so it is with the concept of focusing on the fact that when running, you are always, 100 percent of the time, putting the full weight of your body on just one foot or the other. Oddly, you don’t hear much about this, and if you go to the gym, you’ll notice that most people are doing exercises with both feet firmly planted on the floor. 
We all think of ourselves as intelligent runners, of course, but even the most experienced, veteran runners sometimes lose sight of the wise and effective path to their goals. Why does this happen? I think because we get caught up in the here and now, the ‘today,’ instead of keeping our eyes on the long term goal, not just our long term running goals but sometimes even our life goals. Yes, running can sometimes distract us from our most far-reaching life goals. That’s bad, but on the flip side, running can make us into the person we need to be to achieve those goals, right?
This is it! You’ve been learning about what to do for nine days. Think of this as graduation day, the day you get the last, but most critical, piece of the puzzle. Today, you find out exactly what you should do, and I mean you, personally, should do on Day 1 of your running journey. Today, is you diagnostic run.
Weight loss or management plays a role in the life of virtually every runner. Either they start running to lose weight or they’ve alreaady lost weight, and the want to become a runner to help them maintain that weight loss or they’re worried that their weight will gradually creep up if they don’t get lots of exercise. 
The two main reasons why beginner runners don’t succeed are these:
Many beginner runners don’t warm-up because they think the only reason to warm-up is to prepare to run fast; they know they don’t run fast, so they skip the warm-up. 
