Three Bad Running Habits That Could Harm Your Efforts Like A Bolt Out Of The Blue

We’ve each made a vow to get running at least once in our lives, haven’t we? The ability to do this anywhere with no equipment certainly puts it high on the exercise must-try list. 

The trouble is that, for every person who promises to get running, another gives up altogether. This leaves us all in the graveyard of running dreams, and often prevents us from reaching our fitness goals, at least for the foreseeable. 

While reasons for giving up vary, our failed running dreams often have similar reasoning. Most notably, the following common mistakes manage to trip us up.

Failing to warm-up

A failure to warm-up is always going to be a significant setback here. This is especially the case given that many of us take up running from home, without truly knowing what success here looks like. Rather, we buy the shoes, set the time, and head straight out. Before we know it, aching muscles and ankle injuries put a pin in our plans, sometimes indefinitely.

To avoid that, you need to take ample time to warm up well before every session. Luckily there are plenty of warm-up exercises available on YouTube, meaning there’s no excuse not to get around to this. 

Taking earphones out with you

Earphones and running are synonymous for many of us. After all, your efforts will be much more entertaining if you’ve got something to listen to on the way around. Sadly, blocking your ears stops you from being present, meaning not only that you’re at risk, but also that you won’t listen to what your body is telling you. Once you’re running to the beat of that music, you might not even notice niggles and aches. And, that’s before we even consider the risk of damaged hearing from prolonged loud music! 

Luckily, an audiologist can check that you haven’t suffered this latter issue with methods like a pure tone hearing test. But, no one can check in with your body apart from you, meaning that you should scrap the headphones and focus on how running feels instead.

Running alone

Running alone might seem convenient, but this is yet another reason why we often don’ manage to make a go of our efforts here. On a practical level, only having yourself to turn up for makes it far more likely that you’ll struggle to keep up a regular running routine.

But, from a health perspective, running alone puts you at real risk. This is especially the case when you consider that most of us run in remote areas. If you fall, sprain your ankle, or similar, there won’t be anywhere nearby to help, meaning that long-term damage is far more likely. By comparison, choosing a buddy to take along each time means both that you’ll turn up, and stay safe as you do so!

These issues aren’t impossible to overcome by any means, but you do need to turn your attention to them sooner rather than later to get running back on track at last.