I hear this question often, and it perplexes me every time.

When you look at the sport of distance running, the average high school cross country runner has an injury risk of 33-47% over the course of the season.  There is evidence showing that military recruits have up to a 75% likelihood of injury in the first ten weeks of basic training, which includes a great deal of running.  The majority of these injuries are the result of repetitive stress, and, in my mind are largely PREVENTABLE.

These numbers are INSANE.  If a football team had this level of injury, people would be calling for the coach’s head, but in running this is simply viewed as “part of the game.”

Just running is clearly not working for the world’s population of “runners.”  If it were, we wouldn’t have such a large amount of injured athletes and likely more athletes who continue to enjoy the sport because they weren’t “chewed up and spit out” by the system.

As I noted in a recent post, resistance training does far more than improve strength.  That said, improved strength improves resilience via the law of repetitive motion.  Accessory training can also help develop resilient soft tissues by improving cross sectional area of tissues and the ability to tolerate increased loading in many directions.  Additionally, accessory training allows us to address movement dysfunction in a number of ways, all of which running cannot do.  Simply running on top of dysfunctional movement patterns is ASKING to get injured.  Sure, it doesn’t hurt now, but it is STILL an issue to be addressed.  Just because having high cholesterol doesn’t “hurt,” it needs to be taken care of before it leads to atherosclerosis.

Remember, an injured athlete is useless.

Best regards,

Carson Boddicker

Boddicker Performance