Yoga and running

You might say I’m a trail running evangelist. I have helped dozens train and finish a full trail marathon. I have helped a few finish 50-milers. Two are really close to attempting the 100 mile distance! I’m also a wellness and nutrition evangelist but that’s another story. When I am recruiting new trail runners, I often hear “I can’t run because I have bad knees”. It is almost always untrue. Many have decent knees but bad stride and bad shoes. Pavement and sidewalks certainly don’t help the situation.

Stride, shoes and sidewalks aside, I firmly believe running can cause knee pain that can be avoided via yoga. In simple terms, running tends to overdevelop some of the big muscles. These big muscles overpower the less developed, smaller, muscles in a classic tug-of-war battle held at the knee joint. This is especially true for people previously inactive or people who do too much too fast. When this tug-of-war takes place, the alignment in the knee is altered. This is ok if it is done slowly. If not, it can cause inflammation. More running, more big tight muscles, more inflammation. Vicious cycle. So it’s not the knee, the knee just gets caught in the middle and feels the pain.

The stretching we do in Yoga helps these big muscles. The body is like a sling. Pull in one place and you feel it in another. Running can take it out of balance. Yoga can bring it back. The hamstrings, hips, calves, the I.T. band are all stretched, loosened and elongated so to loosen their hold on the poor knee. I believe Heidi Valenzuela (my instructor)http://www.yogaxoga.wordpress.com/ just may have helped add twenty plus years to my running career.