How to run without hurting your knees? Three tips you must learn!

During the running process, bones and muscles will be worn out to a certain extent, and will also be subjected to a certain impact. Although running is very beneficial to human health, if the method is incorrect, it may cause serious damage to the knees. So, how can we run without hurting the 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 is very different, and the base amount of running is also different. Simply controlling by percentage is just a statistical result and is not very reasonable. Therefore, the feeling every time you run is very important. This feeling is the degree of fatigue of the muscles and body.

After running for a while, you can feel tired 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, a very important point is that the control of the pace and landing becomes worse. The more tired the muscles are, the greater the impact force on the meniscus. When it exceeds its cushioning range, it will damage the femoral head. Many injuries to the meniscus and femoral head are irreparable.

2. Reduce speed training: Under the same running volume, higher speed means greater impact force, which is more likely to hurt the knees. At the same time, the higher speed, the running posture will be deformed. In order to lengthen the stride and increase the speed, the legs unconsciously do not bend at all when landing, and lose the muscle buffering ability when bending through the joints, and the impact force is directly transmitted to the knees. This is also the reason why many beginner runners get injured in the first two months of running when the running volume is very small. Although the running volume is only 2-3 km per day. However, running as fast as you can, when the muscle protection is not strong enough, the knees are injured with huge impact force. For long-distance running and endurance running, even for an experienced runner, speed training usually does not exceed 10% of the total training. And there is usually only one interval speed training per week. Beginners do not need to arrange speed training at all. You can even joke that runners who have a marathon score of 3 hours and 30 minutes do not need speed training. As long as the accumulated training volume is reasonable and the rest time is arranged well, the performance will steadily improve.

3. Adjust running posture: The impact of running posture on the knees has been described in detail in the NHK documentary "Marathon Army". Reasonable control of running posture can allow Patrick Macao (marathon world record holder) to reduce knee impact by more than 25% compared to Japan's top marathon athletes. Although ordinary people cannot achieve Macao's amazingly coordinated running posture. 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 last stage. This is a natural mechanism to increase the stability of standing). 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 the ankle to be directly below the knee as much as possible, or slightly behind it. The bend at the knee will play an excellent cushioning role.