The 4 Biggest Errors People Make Jumping Into Endurance Training

… and how to avoid the injuries that follow

Running far is a different beast…

Oftentimes people jump into it too hard and too fast without linear progressions, the right gear, or joints ready for the load/lacking range of motion.

Just the other day we had an All Terrain Human reach out to us with some issues in the lateral side of his arch.

Many factors can go into this - gait, shoes, running prep, being a fast twitch athlete your whole life and jumping in hard and fast into endurance training, etc.

There are four things we like to look at when it comes to the feet and running.

1. Are you wearing the right shoes/socks/anti chafing balm?

Anyone who says shoes can’t cause issues in your feet probably hasn’t run over 10 miles at one time. IF you are looking to get into distance running, take the time to find the RIGHT shoe for you and your gait. After thousands of reps, if you need support in certain areas or even have too much in some, it is going to put pressure on different areas of the feet, knees, hips, etc.

No way around it.

2. But what if you have the right shoes like this athlete did?

Then we need to think about preparing the feet for this load.
Much of your foot is connective tissue. That means this tissue only handles load with...more load. Tendons, ligaments, and connective tissue can easily become aggravated when they are overloaded.

So when preparing the ankles and feet we like these three ankle/calf strength preparation drills.

Bilateral Calf Raises with SLOW Eccentric

Coaching Cues: Start with just bodyweight and towel lightly rolled up under the feet. This provides a little stretch but not enough to overload the tendons.
After 3-4 weeks of this progression, feel free to progress to a deep drop to further strengthen that tissue in a bigger range of motion.

Bilateral Calf Raise with SINGLE LEG Eccentric

Coaching Cues: When running, your legs are individually taking eccentric loading each stride, not together. Take the same variation listed above and finish with 5 -10 single leg eccentrics with a 3 second count. Only work within the range that feels comfortable or not in pain. This will help increase that tissue resilience.

Seated Calf Raise

Coaching Cues: Look - we don’t need to see how much weight we can do with seated calf raises. This isn’t a globo gym. Our goal is to increase strength endurance in the Gastroc/Post Tib/ and Ant Tib. The seated bent knee position is going to isolate those lower calf muscles much more than the standing locked knee position. This isolation strengthens all parts of the calf.

3. First we strengthen. Now let’s talk about ankle mobility.

We have to make sure our ankle has full ankle dorsiflexion and plantarflexion.

If we do not have that full range of motion we will definitely start to run in some compensating pattern. Too much pronation or supination as your foot tries to rotate around your lack of ankle mobility is bad news.Here are 2 super easy ankle mobility drills to get full range of motion.

Ankle Wall Stretch

Coaching Cues: We like this one because it is super simple to do anywhere any time. Make sure you stretch with the knee bent and straight. When stretching with a straight knee, you should feel it up by the knee. When the knee is bent, you should feel it closer to the achilles in the calf.

Banded Ankle Dorsiflexion

Coaching Cues: This one is a little more difficult but allows you to isolate that soleus a little more while also working on joint articulation in the ankle. Sometimes the joint needs a little banded distraction to get back into a more advantageous position to create true dorsiflexion and plantar flexion.

This exercise can be performed in the standing or kneeling position. Give them both a try and see which one you prefer.

4. Starting endurance running too fast and not training in a heart rate zone.

If you have been primarily a fast twitch athlete your whole life or do lots of high intensity workouts, you will have a tough time hopping right into endurance running at those higher heart rates, longer strides, etc.

The longer the stride, the more load the calf/ankle has to take each step.
The faster you are running, the more load the calf/ankle has to take each step.

So how do you progress up?

Start your first 6 weeks training primarily in the z1/z2 heart rate zones and shorten your stride.

What is z1/z2? To find the top of your z2 subtract your age from 180. To find your z1 range, shoot us a direct message or email and we would love to nerd out with you. 

Training at these lower heart rates forces you to slow down, decreasing the joint stress.If you can do that while also working on getting closer to 170-180 strides per minute you will be on your way towards allowing your connective tissue adequate time to adapt to the new stimulus while also building up the slow twitch muscle fibers that are most likely underdeveloped.

Each muscle has a blend of fast and slow fibers. If you're a fast twitch or a HIIT athlete, you will most likely be relying too much on your fast twitch that is good as gone after 10 minutes. You have to  take the time in these slower zones to allow slow twitch fibers to build up mitochondria density, capillary density, endurance, strength etc.

Those are the 4 things we look for when prepping the calves for running. If we can make sure tissue has been loaded correctly prior, we have taken care of some mobility issues. Starting with a zone based approach allows athletes to increase volume with little to no issues.

What’s even better?

We have a free body preparedness quiz to see how ready your body is for any terrain at any moment. Click the link below to see where you’re at and receive some free coaching along the way!

Garry Dubbs is the Co-Creator of ATH Fitness

His main objective in life is to increase people's physical capabilities to allow them to try and explore more things that are fun. If you can only walk, you’re not going to try many new things. But if you can be totally confident in your body’s capabilities, then you will make the world your playground. That’s why for a limited time, ATH is offering the Rugged Body Mobility Guide for FREE! It is a quick total mobility guide that is designed to make your body ready for anything! Just put your email in below and we will get you started on becoming an All Terrain Human, TODAY!