How to Run Better Without Running

Dan Gable, legendary Olympic wrestler and coach, once said, “If something is important, do it every day. If it’s not important, don’t do it.” There’s a lot of truth to that, because a lot of what we do, even with running, involves honing skills that only come with hours of practice.

In fact, it’s said to take ten thousand hours of practice to truly be considered a master at something. That’s two hours of training a day for fourteen years, which is a lot of work and dedication. But, you know, there’s something to be said for the idea of less is more. It’s actually possible to get better at running without running.

At least, for controlled periods. You can’t expect to not run for years and then suddenly come back and smash your previous records, but a short period away from pounding the pavement can actually be just the thing to bust you through a plateau. The trick is that you have to be able to do it right.

Runners notoriously have the some of the highest injury rates in athletics. While these are not generally as dramatic as Joe Theisman’s femur getting snapped like a twig by Lawrence Taylor, it is an insidious problem that will creep up on many if not most runners at some point.

The trouble is repetitive stress, where the body repeats the same action over and over and over. While practice is necessary and good, you can easily get too much of a good thing by doing the same thing all the time, every time. Think of office workers who eventually need surgery because of typing, now imagine the pounding your knees and ankles take.

Even beyond the damage repetitive stress is doing to your body, there’s also the fact of accumulated fatigue. Virtually anyone who trains to get better, which everyone who takes running even a little seriously, is going to be fatiguing their body little by little, in ways that aren’t obvious except over the long term.

The answer to all of this is to stop running. Now, obviously, you should be just sitting on the couch instead of running, although there is something to be said for the rejuvenating effects of vegging out for a week or two every year or so.

No, instead you’ll want to replace your running with another hard aerobic activity for six weeks or so every so often. The best time to do this is right after a hard race, to give your body some time to rest and recover.

Try to pick and activity that will keep your lungs and legs in shape while giving them a new stress to adapt to. Try running stairs exclusively, or taking up biking for a while. The trick is that you need to work hard.

If you do it right, you find that when you come back to running you will be able to with a lot more vigor and energy then you previously had, and you may even gain the momentum needed to hit some brand new personal records.