The Best Way to Reduce Running Injuries

Running has been around for a long, long time… you could even make the argument that it’s been around since the beginning of time. It’s a fundamental movement that humans perform and officially became a sport all the way back in 776 B.C. when a foot face was the FIRST ever event in the FIRST Olympic games. Then, fast forward to 490 B.C when Pheidippides ran roughly 25 miles to deliver news of a victory against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, which gave way to the marathon race being added to the first-ever international Olympics in Athens, Greece (which only 9 out 25 athletes finished!).

This entire blog post could be on the history of running. It’s an integral part of being human. So we should be pretty good at it; right? Well… not really. Running related injuries are some of the most common injuries that we see in the clinic.  When you look at the literature, anywhere from 36% to 57% of the running population will experience an injury every year and upwards of 75% of all running injuries can be related to overuse.

That’s a lot of people who are getting injured every year. Too many. We see a lot of those people every day at Athletes’ Potential, which has allowed us to pick up on something - something that is criminally absent from running programs: Strength Training.

This. Is. Huge. No matter how you try to look at it, the lack of strength training in the running community is astonishing and unwarranted. Time and time again research is proving the injury reducing and performance boosting benefits of strength training for runners, yet I still hear things like, “I don’t want to get bulky,” or, “it will slow me down,” or, “I’ll get too stiff.” All of these are based on archaic midsets and need to be changed. Nowhere in the literature are these thoughts supported and, in fact, it finds the exact opposite.

However, all that being said, strength training has to be specific to the performance goals of runners. You shouldn’t go out and try to do the exact same training program as a bodybuilder if your goal is to be able to run a marathon. Movements that are going to improve single leg loading and train in multiple planes of motion is the name of the game for runners. Below are some of my favorite exercises to do just that.


Bulgarian Split Squats

Single Leg Romanian Deadlifts

Step Ups with Knee Drive Finish

Lateral Lunges

Hollow Rock

Step Downs

Band Resisted Side Steps   

If you’re dealing with an injury and looking to boost your performance as a runner, reach out with any questions. We design and implement programs to help our athletes, whether you’re someone who doesn’t know where to start or has had an unsuccessful rehab experience. It is our goal for the people we work with to return to their sport or activity performing better than they did before.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jake, PT, DPT, CSCS