Being able to walk or run injury-free doesn’t happen by accident… and believe it or not, neither do most injuries. Although there are many people out there who are naturally talented in running and walking, there are very few people who never get injured. Even the best fall prey to training mistakes or momentary lapses in their technique. We’re all human and therefore subject to everything that entails, which means we spend our lives dealing with the consequences of our choices whether they’re made consciously or unconsciously.

Making the choice to live a life of injury-free running or walking involves making efforts to observe what you’re doing so you can lower the odds of being sidelined for any reason. You can choose to be injury-free by doing everything in your power to run or walk in a way that won’t hurt your body.

This choice applies to injury-prevention as well as injury-recovery. Whether you’re intent on avoiding injury or whether you want to recover from an injury, make the choice to run and walk as efficiently and as biomechanically correct as possible and you’ll carry with you the best health insurance policy there is…for the rest of your life.

The choice to be injury-free begins with self-observation. Listen to your body. Do you “hear” complaints from any body parts, in terms of aches or pain? Whenever you do, ask yourself the simple question, “Why is this happening?” Many possible answers will come, but keep asking that question until you discover the true source of the problem. Many times injuries are layered and the primal cause is not clear at first. But if you keep asking your question at each successive layer, you’ll eventually get to the origin. And when you do, you stand in the unique position of being able to choose to rid yourself of the problem forever by addressing the real cause.

When you feel that you’re onto the answer to your question, you can either refer back to the ChiWalking book or the ChiRunning book, or go to the library of articles on our website to see which focuses you can apply to correcting the problem.

Here’s where choice comes in. Once you know what it is you need to do, make a choice to instate the corrective focus(es) with every step you take until the problem goes away. Your ability to move forward into health lies in your ability to be relentlessly mindful in your movement. This is the true nature of mind-body work. Making the choice for health requires constant focus… but think of the alternatives.

Namaste,
Danny

If you’re feeling any soreness in your quads it can be due to several issues:

• It is often due to bending at the waist when you’re running. (see pages 161 & 162 in the book) This will put undue stress onto your quads because they have to “catch” you with each foot strike. When you bend at the waist your feet naturally swing out in front of your body which then creates a heel strike, which is always a direct cause of tired quads. The best thing you can do for your quads is to always run with your center of gravity in front of where your feet are touching the ground so that your stride opens up behind you as soon as your foot hits the ground. If your foot lands anywhere in front of your body, you’re “braking” with each step and you’ll feel it in your quads.
• You might also have too long of a stride which will cause the same result. Running with a shorter stride allows you to keep your foot strike under your body instead of in front of it.
• You are also probably not rotating your pelvis with each stride. (see pages 179 & 180 in the book) Allowing your pelvis to rotate as you run is a great way to cushion the shock to your quads because much of the impact of your foot strike is taken by your pelvis, not by your quads.

Cheers - Danny