What is One Thing Many New Runners Overlook?

I love new runners.

Well, I love all runners, but there is something about the excitement that I usually see on the faces of new runners that gets me fired up. I love being able to share tips, tricks, and pertinent information with them. I love seeing the rapid progress that they are able to make, and I’m sometimes slightly envious that they are able to progress so rapidly while I feel like I have to push myself to the brink just to shave a few seconds off of my 5k time.

New runners are like little kids on Christmas morning, and I love that.

Isn’t My Niece Adorable?

There is, however, one thing that new runners tend to avoid worrying about until it’s too late.

New Runners Aren’t the Only Ones that Overlook It

Running is a physical sport, whether you realize it or not. Every time your foot hits the ground, there is some serious stress being exerted on your muscles, tendons, bones, and joints, and if you’re not careful that repetitive stress can lead to a variety of injuries.

How many new runners think about injury prevention before they start running? Not many.

But don’t feel bad guys, because not many of the runners that I know that have been running for years worry about injury prevention either, until they wind up injured of course.

Why don’t more runners worry about preventing an injury instead of waiting until they have to treat one?

Come on guys, y’all know the saying about an ounce of prevention right?

Education is the Key

You know the real reason that new runners overlook injury prevention, right?

It’s because they simply don’t know any better.

That’s why I’m writing this post.

If a new runner doesn’t know that running injuries are pretty common, they certainly won’t know that they should be proactive to try and prevent those injuries in the first place. And even if they would like to be proactive, odds are they might not know what kind of exercises they should be doing.

Shoot, many regular runners don’t even know what kind of exercises they should be doing to prevent injuries.

So those of us that do know, we need to be willing to share our knowledge. And not just with our paying coaching clients either, but with all runners who are seeking to improve at the sport that we all love.

Whether or not you are paying me as a coach or to create a race-specific training plan for you, I want to help you stay injury free. That is why I’ll be spending a lot covering on the blog, on my YouTube channel, and on the Quick Tip episodes of the podcast over the rest of the year.

So stay tuned over the coming weeks and months, learn a few things, and don’t overlook injury prevention any longer.

And that goes for the veteran runners every bit as much as for the new runners out there.

What Do You Do to Prevent Running Related Injuries?