For you die-hard endurance runners, I’m not trying to rain on your parade, and I want you to remember that I was a devoted endurance runner for a long time. I’m gonna talk a little trash about the broken promises and unintended consequences of the running boom, but it’s in the spirit of recalibrating away from some of the worst mistakes and flawed approaches seen amongst the running masses today.
If you are enthused about endurance running, there’s a way to do it that promotes health and well-being, and there’s a way to do it that’s potentially destructive and frustrating. These 20 shocking truths will help you reflect further on adopting the best approach to endurance training, so you can progress steadily, minimize the stress impact of your hobby, promote general health and longevity, and perform to your potential. The first step to improving your approach and avoiding the common setbacks is awareness, so please reflect on these shocking truths. In future blog posts, and in the book Born To Walk, you can learn more details about an optimal approach to endurance training and total body functional fitness for longevity.
20 Shocking Truths
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Endurance running, anything beyond a mile or two, is most likely bad for your health. For the vast majority of participants, running, even at a “comfortable” pace, is too physically stressful. This is not conjecture; it can be validated by your training heart rate being beyond your fat max heart rate too frequently.
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Running is only health-boosting if you are lean and fit and can jog/run at a comfortable pace that emphasizes fat burning and minimizes glucose burning.
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Running is catabolic (breaks your body down, requiring recovery); walking is anabolic (sends the genetic signaling for efficient metabolic, immune, cognitive and endocrine function)
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Running prompts genetic signaling for fat storage, bone loss, and muscle loss–a “skinny fat” physique.
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Running prompts chronic overproduction of stress hormones, sympathetic nervous system dominance, overeating, and the accumulation of visceral fat.
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Elevated, cushioned running shoes enable an inefficient heel strike-jarring-braking-overstriding technique. This technique is implemented by the vast majority of runners because running with correct technique is too difficult to sustain unless one is extremely fit and adapted to running.
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Essentially, running shoes enable poorly adapted people who shouldn’t be running to shuffle down the roads and trails with poor technique, inappropriately dispersed impact trauma, and chronic overuse injuries.
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Fifty percent of regular runners are injured each year, with 25% of runners injured at any given time. This is from research from around the world, including Harvard, Yale, Wake Forest, Runner’s World magazine, and many respected international resources.
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If you were asked to run barefoot on a hard surface, you would immediately exhibit excellent technique due to enhanced proprioception and foot functionality. In contrast, shoes dampen proprioception, enabling the jarring technique without the immediate penalty.
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When running barefoot, impact forces are similar whether the surface is hard or soft, because we engage in pre-activation and muscle tuning to absorb impact gracefully in accordance with the surface.
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Chronic cardio, defined as a pattern of steady-state endurance workouts that are slightly to significantly too stressful, last for too long, and are repeated too frequently, can suppress immune function, promote chronic inflammation, compromise gut health and damage mitochondria.
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Years and decades of extreme endurance training can lead to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, a phenomenon known as the excessive endurance exercise hypothesis.
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The monotony, repetitive impact trauma, and mental and physical suffering associated with steady-state cardio can easily breed an obsessive, addictive mentality, known to scientists as the “obligate runner.”
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Excessive pursuit of the lauded “endorphin rush” generated by strenuous workouts can lead to depression, anxiety, and hormonal burnout.
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To escape from the psychological dysfunction of the obligate runner, it’s essential to de-emphasize results, reduce training stress load, and release the attachment of self-esteem to the outcome.
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The most celebrated endurance events like marathon and ironman are arbitrary distances inspired by fabrication and bravado, glorified by marketing hype, and are inherently antithetical to health.
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The “endurance runner hypothesis” of evolutionary biology, arguing that humans possess genetic attributes ideal for endurance exercise, is widely misinterpreted and misappropriated today into chronic cardio. Humans are adapted for endurance exercise, as seen with ancestral persistence hunting to rise to the top of the food chain. However, opportunistic scavenging and persistence hunting are really about extensive walking, scouting, crawling, occasionally sprinting, and using our brains to prevail on the food chain.
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In modern times, the Homo sapiens genetic gifts that we do possess for endurance are typically buried under excess body fat, insufficient daily activity, weak musculature, and dysfunctional feet caused by a lifetime in shoes.
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The world’s greatest endurance athletes train in a relatively less stressful, more sensible manner than the average novice. Legendary marathoner Eliud Kipchoge runs 83% of his weekly mileage at “easy” intensity–equating to a walk for most recreational runners.
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In the history of humanity, we have never done endurance running for recreation–until the advent of elevated, cushioned running shoes that enabled the masses to partake in an overly-stressful, genetically offensive endeavor.