I love running. I used to run 4 to 5 times a week. It is a great way to start the day. It releases the pleasure hormones “endorphins”, sends blood around the body, and provides the gratifying feelings of achievement, progress, and productivity.

I still run occasionally, I support those that enjoy running, and I encourage people to run as long as running is the best form of exercise to help them achieve a specific goal; running a 10k race for instance. That being said, I cringe when people say that running is the best way to lose fat, or get healthy, and when people fail to use their own critical thinking skills to think objectively about health and fitness. In other words, ignoring the poor quality sources, and finding the truth from credible and unbiased authorities.

Many are agreed that frequent running will result in some form of injury but few understand the bigger picture. Research has shown that 60% of runners are injured every year, with one running injury occurring for every one hundred hours of performance on average. This is the small stuff, the real concern is that damage caused by frequent running will often manifest after a period of 15 to 20 years after performing the activity. Come the age of 40 or 50, runners will start experiencing knee pain just climbing the stairs; or difficulty raising theirs arms above their head because of Osteophytes (bone spurs) that have formed in the shoulder joint; or can no longer turn or bend well due to chronic lower-back pain.

There is tons of data to prove that long distance runners are much more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, cancer, liver and gall bladder disorders, muscle damage, atrial fibrillation, kidney dysfunction (renal abnormalities), acute micro thrombosis in the vascular system, brain damage, spinal degeneration, and germ-cell cancers than are their less active counterparts.

It is important to throw in a caveat here: Running 2 or 3 times a week at a slow to moderate pace for 30 to 45 minutes should not result in the degree of damage described above and will improve overall health and fitness, as long as, muscle mass is simultaneously maintained/improved through appropriate resistance training i.e. HIT.

Frequent running that is not accompanied by regular strength training will signal to the body that the current level of muscle mass is burdensome. In response, the body will reduce overall muscle mass. Muscle mass designed to protect the skeletal structure and organs, provide strength, release body fat stores, restore insulin sensitivity, optimise bone mineral density, stabilise blood pressure, provide flexibility and more.

Muscle mass is very metabolically expensive. The body must burn 50 to 100 calories per day to sustain 1 pound of muscle mass. Building muscle and eating healthily beats running to burn calories any day of the week.

High Intensity Training is a safe, and time efficient method of training that effectively fatigues muscles to produce the desired adaptive response. By training your muscles using HIT, you are also going to initiate fat loss by cleaving glycogen from the muscles, which will in turn increase insulin sensitivity, activating adrenaline which acts on hormone sensitive lipase. This process triggers what is known as the “amplification cascade”, mobilizing stored body fat to replace glucose stores within the body’s musculature.

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