You Can Run Pain Free | Brad Beer

In this episode, we meet Brad Beer, the author of You Can Run Pain Free.  Brad Beer is a physiotherapist in Gold Coast, Austrailia.  He works with professional athletes and Olympians, along with everyday runners (or wannabe runners) to help them pursue their sports without pain or injury.

What are the benefits of running?

• Cardiovascular fitness
• Increased longevity
• Lower risk of stroke
• Lower blood pressure
• Lower risk of heart disease
• Lower risk of diabetes
• Improvements in body mass index
• Reduction in depression
• Improvement in cognition

Five step method for evaluation of running

1. Discovering the running body
2. Running with great technique
3. Understanding running shoes
4. Hips stability
5. The power of rest

What's your running body?

This first step is critical.

Understand your flexibility

• Floppies – Hypermobile individuals.  Need strength training to protect their joints.
• Flippies – In the middle of mobility.  May need a mix of both strength mobility training,
• Stiffies – Non-mobile individuals.  Need mobility training to protect their joints.

Know your optimal body weight for running.  

If you're carrying too much body weight, you'll be putting too much strain on your joints.  Losing a little weight, even if it isn't body fat, will mean less stress on the body.

Running screen/evaluation

Using a 10 point checklist, a running expert can evaluate your running form.  This checklist looks at the length of muscles, endurance tests, mobility, etc.  You can get the full checklist from the book.

Links

running.physio

The tao of running | Gary Dudney