Listen to Your Body: The Key to Running Smarter, Not Harder

Oftentimes when runners feel off or something hurts when they are running, they shrug it off and chalk it up to soreness or fatigue. This is a common error and is something that should be avoided when you are training. Your body uses these messages to communicate that something isn’t working properly and you could be injuring your body. Now, I’m not giving all of you an excuse to skip a workout for general soreness or fatigue from a previous day’s workout because that is quite common and good to train through. The main thing you need to look at when approaching a situation where you feel sore or tired is how that feeling compares to how you normally feel after a tough workout or lift. If that feeling is worse than normal, then it becomes a situation where you need to proceed with caution and be careful about your next steps in the process. If you choose to shrug it off and push through it, that’s when injury can occur. In those situations, my recommendation would be to stretch out the area of soreness and proceed with caution. If your stretching doesn’t make it feel better you probably shouldn’t push it, but if you feel good enough to go workout, you should do so but with caution. If during the workout the pain or soreness gets worse you should stop immediately to let that muscle rest and recover properly. If you need to take time off, you should also try and find other ways to still train without injuring the muscle that is hurting. This is where cross-training can become really good because those methods of training can still keep up your body’s physical fitness levels without stressing that injured muscle too much. It is important though, to be good listeners to what your body is saying to you and to take appropriate action based on what you hear.