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Comment by zarkov99 | Hacker News Reader

How have you managed to keep your knees working?

That running, per se, ruins your knees as been debunked. Just search "running knees arthritis" and you'll find numerous recent (>2015) papers showing that running can be in fact protective. It's amazing how the body seems to follow a "use it or lose it" philosophy in almost everything.

I think it's important to note, that not all activities someone could call running are good for the body, and not all are bad for the body.

You can break bricks karate style and be fine, if you build up and take it slow and steady. You can also just tap or lift bricks 1k, 10k times per day and be fine.

However it won't end well if you use bad form, try to go max on day 1 (didn't build up), or try to break 1k bricks/day, every day¹.

Stupid running can be 1k-10k impacts per day with bad form (twisted joints), high stress (stomping on concrete), low regeneration (cartilage needs squishing for nutrients) - use it like this and you will lose it blazing fast.

¹ I kind of guess.

This is true, like anything, you need to build up to it. I lived an entirely sedentary lifestyle for the first 30 years of my life, hated all sport and physical activity. Dated a girl who taught me the joys of exercise and movement and I've been hooked on running for the past 4 years.

Takes some time to build up a base, and of course you need to be careful if you are quite heavy initially like I was. If you just listen to your body and don't overdo it, it all comes together pretty naturally. While bad form is a risk, a lot of what I've read seems to indicate that your body will naturally find a running gait that is optimal for your body and minimizes impact. Running without headphones also helps, just listen to your footfalls and adjust your stride to minimize impact. (I can't find any studies on this, but I can't help but feel that a lighter footfall is likely minimizing impact on joints somehow)

> lighter footfall is likely minimizing impact on joints somehow

Simple: less stress (impact) => less damage (impact).

Listening to you body helps a lot. You body will (usually) tell you when you're doing something wrong, but it can be hard to understand.

I wanted to warn, because misconceptions like: I'm running => running is good for body => I'm doing good for body, even though my knees hurt every time; they can ruin many knees. Usually it won't get far, but there are always those who push.

Dumb luck, picked the right parents? Some of my running friends from back in the day have had knee problems.

My mileage was never that high, even during my late 20s: maybe forty miles per week as maintenance, rising to around sixty when training for a marathon. And frankly it wasn't that fast.

If you do a training program like ATG your knees will be bulletproof: https://atg-homepage.webflow.io/

Have you tried this?

I am rather early on in the program but I’m mainly doing it for my hip moreso than my knees but so far I definitely notice an increase in knee stability and my ankle mobility is incredible. In life and in sports you cannot always avoid having your knees go past your toes, so gradually building the capacity for your knees and ankles to allow your knees to support you when they are past the toes makes sense to me. Everyone is so focused on building hip power to be able to explosively accelerate but this program is all about building the muscles that decelerate the body. Most non contact knee injuries in basketball come when a player plants and tries to come to an abrupt stop. This program builds your VMOs and tibialis and many other muscles that help bulletproof your knees against the extreme forces involved in coming to a sudden stop. The extreme moves that Ben demonstrates are very advanced and the program would never ever have someone do them without following the proper progression. If your knees are fucked up you just begin with backwards walking until your knee pain is reduced enough to progress further. Backwards walking is the safest way to begin building stability with the knees past the toes and this alone can help reduce knee pain.

Fantastic. Appreciate the personal feedback. I do have mild hip and knee issues so I wanna address them before they get worse. How long does his program take, in other words how long do you spend a week on this?

I'm doing the knee ability zero program. Currently I spend about 40-45 mins 3 times a week doing the program. It's 15 mins warm-up with backwards walking and then about 25-30 mins of exercises. I'm sure if I was more efficient and didn't take as long of rests between things I could shave significant time off of that. Depending on where you are at in the progression it's shorter or longer. I'm not yet at the stage where I can do the patrick step-up to full ankle bend so I'm not yet doing the ATG split squat. So as you progress the time commitment gets a little longer as you meet the requirements to begin certain exercises. This time is including various stretches that are included as part of the workout and which I view as a key element of the program.

There are also additional upper-body and off-day stretching routines that you can do on off-days, but I am personally just doing yoga on off-days so I can't give you a review of those aspects of the program.

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