The Most Undertrained Tissues In The Sport Of Running.

There are no bad movements. There are only unprepared bodies.

I began my strength coaching career in the world of CrossFit. If you wanted to see an entire gym full of unprepared bodies, that would be the spot. Most people that come into a CrossFit gym are people that have little to no athletic background. And therein lies the problem. CrossFit tends to ignore 2 different sets of prerequisites. The first being mobility. And the second being strength.

Lets start with the first prerequisite. Mobility. The human body is set up in a series of alternating mobile and stable joints. The ankles are mobile, knees are stable, hips are mobile, low back is stable, thoracic spine is mobile, neck is stable, shoulders are mobile, elbows are stable, and wrists are mobile. If a mobile joint, such as the ankle, isn't as mobile as it should be, the stable joint above it, the knee, has to become mobile. The back squat as an example, requires the least amount of ankle mobility. The front squat requires more. And the overhead squat requires more still. More often than not, there is no movement assessment whatsoever. The end result is chronic knee pain that will eventually lead to an injury.

Next up is strength prerequisites. Everyone is familiar with all of the swinging pull ups they do. The purpose of those kipping pull ups is to circumvent a strength deficit. But, we're not really here to talk about kipping pull up. Runners aren't doing those. They are, however, squatting and deadlifting. And a lot of what I see is them building up to 5 rep, 3 rep, and even 1 rep maxes. 

Dr. Stuart McGill is a chiropractor who has studied the lumbar spine and low back injuries for the better part of 30 years. In his book, The Gift Of Injury, he stated that a person coming off the couch with no lifting or athletic background should be lifting submaximal loads for years before they begin lifting maximal loads. The reason behind this statement is, change in tissues is force over time. Meaning, it takes years for the muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones to thicken to the point where they can tolerate maximal loading. In my experience I've seen collegiate athletes who never had a strength training program during their highschool running career, being thrust into a strength training program that mirrors the football team. One season that I had witnessed personally, they had a 1 rep max deadlift day, followed immediately by a 1 rep max squat day. The end result was as you would expect, half the team was injured, and some of them were out for the season.

That long winded introduction brings be to the point of this blog post. The most under trained tissues in the body is connective tissue. You can divide the tissues into 2 different types. Red stuff (muscle) and white stuff (connective tissue). Most strength training systems focus solely on the red stuff. In fact, most rehab practices do as well. Therein lies the problem. Most injuries occur in the connective tissue. Achillis tendons, patellar tendons, hamstrings, and the list goes on. 

The mechanism for injury is, the load going into the tissues is greater than the load bearing capacities of the tissues. More often than not, if there is a connective tissue injury, such as the high hamstring, the rehab protocol is to rehab the muscle. The end result is a stronger muscle.