Josh’s 1/2 Marathon: Non-Running Preparation

With about six weeks to go to the half marathon – I’m feeling the pressure of the pending deadline!

I wanted to touch on a few of the basic things that I started (all the way back in January!) to prepare my un fit body for pounding the pavement a few times a week. Essentially having six to seven months to prepare was I think almost a minimum for me in terms of running 21km from a very unfit state. This is probably a throw back to my first blog but giving yourself a realistic timeframe/expectation I think is critical – human bodies and the various tissues inside our bodies take time to adapt, change and strengthen. You can’t cheat physiology…

So in order to help my body prepare and as a physio knowing the bulk of distance running injuries relate to the foot, ankle and knee, I started some key exercises. If you read some biomechanics literature, then you’ll discover that an average runner is landing with such force that their gastrocnemius (the big top calf muscle) is absorbing three times our bodyweight. Our soleus (the deeper lower calf muscles) is absorbing as much as six times our bodyweight! Now this happens each step of a run, so each single leg landing this occurs.

If I told you to jump into a leg press machine and start repping bent knee calf raises at six times your body weight single leg, you’d probably laugh, like most of my running patients. But it’s really no joke as there is clear biomechanical data to suggest that that’s exactly what happens when we run – now this does increase with speed, but if we use this as a baseline goal it’s a great place to start. So I’ve been working on three times a week, completing 3 x 6-8 RM bent and straight knee calf raises. Like all things progressive overload is the key – for me bent leg calf raising should be about 600kg! I’m not there, but I’m working my way there.

Moving up the chain, I’ve been working on hip / glute strength. The bonus of this is many distance running injuries occurring at the knee are related to a deficit in glute strength, particularly gluteus Medius – one of the main stabilisers of the pelvis. I don’t have any biomechanical data for this muscle, but knowing I’ve got to land 10,000 odd times on each leg, it’s fair to say the stronger the better to deal with that load.

Considering running is a single leg landing event, I’ve been focussing my time on single leg exercises such as single leg box squat, pistol squat, split squat etc. It’s not to say that double leg exercises don’t have a place – but I’m looking for bang for buck and to really get that glute med working, I need to challenge it in a single leg stance position. For the same reason, I’ve skipped exercises such as bridging and the good old clamshell exercise. In physio there is ‘no bad’ exercises, just better ones. There is always a time and place for any exercises, even the ones the internet says are bad, or good for that matter, but it’s the reason why and when that you pay a physiotherapist for their expertise. We can all look up glute med exercises on YouTube, but knowing why or why not, how, and when it’s ok to progress those exercises, you can’t really get because you need someone to assess your movement quality and deficits to know where the start, middle and end goals for you as an individual are. So again, working at a ‘hard’ weight of 6-8RM for three sets, three times a week of those single leg exercises I mentioned above.