You are not Mo Farah!
First off, let’s set the record straight. The guy is a lethal runner. Bombing’ along at over 20km per hour, fuelled on nothing but Quorn meatless mince is not something I can do. Or ever will be able to do. It’s been quite awhile since I even ran 5k I admit.
Nonetheless I have a bone to pick with running. A meatless bone at that. Well not so much running, more so the purpose of running. Running to get fit.
Why?
It is a bad place to start a fitness journey. Perhaps a good place to end it. You can run to the top of the Philly Museum of Art like Rocky when you’ve got fit, but until then, let’s stick to weightlifting.
Why weightlifting?
Weightlifting, and resistance training in general is usually the best place to begin a fitness journey. There are a number of reasons for this.
You build muscle when lifting weights. Obvious. What doesn’t seem to be obvious to many people is that the muscles you produce in resistance training will help you to run better.
You develop the strength, mobility and elasticity of your joints when training with weights. This too will help you with running. Running is a high impact sport and can involve a huge number of strides per jogging session. If your joints, let’s take knees, are not sufficiently strong and stable, each one of those strides will only further compound any underlying or developing issues. This is also the case if your ankle is insufficiently strong or mobile. Have a read of my article ‘Walking Gait & What it tells us about the body’ to have a better understanding of how the lower body functions.
I often hear runners complaining about how sore they are after a run. Their ankles, knees and back being the common areas of complaint. So much so that Patellofemoral syndrome, (knee pain) has become commonly known as Runner’s knee. Starting to see the bigger picture yet?
Weightlifting greatly aids the postural muscles of the posterior chain (the back of your body for the rest of us). With that in mind, you are building an upright torso, one capable of running without hunching over as your body tires during running. And standing up straight with your shoulders back is never a bad thing in life. Gents, check out my article ‘The Lat Pulldown Machine? Useful for Pull Ups? Yay or Nay?’ to see how to dramatically increase your posterior back muscles.
Competitive runners (or at least the good ones) don’t just run! They use weights in the vast majority of their training sessions to compliemt their running capabilities.
I could go on, but as it is unlikely anyone is actually reading this. I will end my list of reasons to begin your fitness journey with weights rather than running here.
Just remember, Mo ain’t out there running every day, and neither should you be.
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