Real Life Runners with Angie and Kevin Brown

436: Hips and Single Leg Strength

• Angie Brown

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Training Single-Leg Control for Better Running

In this week’s episode, we’re diving into something I talk about with runners every single day: your hips. If you’ve ever wondered why certain niggles keep showing up, why your gait feels “off,” or why your stride doesn’t feel as smooth as it should, this episode is for you.

Although many people think of running as a two-legged sport, it is actually a one-legged activity repeated thousands of times. Every step is a single-leg balance, stability, and power moment. So if your hips aren’t pulling their weight, you’ll feel it. For many runners, especially as you move into your 40s and beyond, hip weakness becomes one of the biggest contributors to gait inefficiencies and overuse injuries.

In this episode, we break down:

  • Why hip strength and control are foundational for efficient, pain-free running
  • How single-leg stability impacts everything from cadence to stride mechanics
  • The surprising ways hip weakness shows up in your gait (sometimes in places you wouldn’t expect!)
  • Personal stories from our own “aha” moments—when we finally connected the dots between hip strength and better running
  • Simple assessments you can do at home to understand your hip control
  • Key exercises that build strength, stability, coordination, and power—all levels welcome
  • Why runners over 40 should prioritize this even more (hint: it’s not just about strength—it’s about longevity)

We wrap up the conversation with actionable steps you can start using today to feel more stable, more powerful, and more confident on the run. Because when your hips show up, everything in your running feels better, and your everyday movement does, too.

If you’ve been skipping your strength work or unsure where to start, this episode will give you the clarity and motivation to take the next right step.

Tune in and let’s get those hips working for you, not against you!


00:51 The Importance of Hip Strength in Running

01:12 Personal Stories and Experiences

01:49 Understanding the Role of Hips in Running Mechanics

07:15 Kevin's Journey and Hip Strengthening Exercises

09:20 Common Running Issues and Hip Weakness

22:59 Understanding Pelvic Drop and Lateral Trunk Lean

23:43 Compensations and Ov

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

Angie:

Welcome back to the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 436. So most runners probably think of running as a two legged sport, but the truth is running is actually a one legged sport repeated thousands of times, and that's why hip strength and single leg strength and control are so critical every. Almost every gait issue and overuse injury that I've seen in my 18 plus years of being a physical therapist traces back to some sort of hip, weak weakness and poor single length control. So today we're talking about both of those things and taking you back in a little storytelling of how all of this got started with Kevin and I. So stay tuned. Welcome back to the show runners. Today we're talking about the hips.

Kevin:

The hips and the hips. Don't lie.

Angie:

I, I was gonna say that. I know I was waiting for, I can't believe it.

Kevin:

You, you dropped that one because Come on, Shakira, because your hips clearly do not lie.

Angie:

Shakira. Shakira. Oh. We're gonna start in, into singing already in the episode. We're

Kevin:

a minute in and we're into song. Excellent. I

Angie:

mean, this is always gonna be the, a sign of a good episode if you ask me. As a lot of I am a physical therapist. I have a doctorate in physical therapy. I've been practicing for over 18 years now, which is insanity. And considering we just celebrated our 18th. Wedding anniversary yesterday. That's an easy thing to keep track of.

Kevin:

Yeah. Yeah. Apparently those guys match up nicely.

Angie:

Yeah. Because we got married right after I graduated from PT school.

Kevin:

Yes.'cause I, same year. Yes. I waited until you were a doctor, until I married you. It's sounds weird that way, but that's fantastic. But that is timing what actually happened.

Angie:

That is actually what happened. So let's take it back to PT school because that's where this whole journey started. And this is the thing that, I don't know if. A lot of runners really understand this, especially if you've gotten into this sport for recreation or to get in better shape, but. A lot of runners that I've worked with in the past and even clients, on our team when they first come in, before they start to go through some of the lessons in our program and really understand what's going on in their body, don't realize how important the hips are. I think a lot of people think about running and think about the feet. They think about what shoes they're wearing and they think about, they've heard of the terms of Pronation and supination and they think about control and do I need to have an orthotic and a certain amount of support in my feet? But not as many people are familiar with the critical role of the hips in running.

Kevin:

yeah, my background, I have a lot of background in running. You have the background in physical therapy before you really fully embrace. The love of running it kind, those kind of came together. but my background in, in running and selling shoes, a lot of my thoughts on how to fix any sort of injury issue was to put the appropriate shoe on it. Yeah. And my strength training protocol came from what I was doing for strength when I was in high school. So we're looking at like mid nineties strength training. Yeah. That's very different than current strength training. And even in college that we're like. Early two thousands so that even that form of strength training from coming from very good sources was still not what we should be doing based off of like current understanding.

Angie:

And so one of the things that people don't really understand is what exact, like how the hips are essentially the power center of running. That's really where. All of your, I shouldn't say all of your power, but the majority of your power comes from, because your glutes are your main hip muscles, and there's three different glutes that, that we're talking about. There's glute max, glute made, and glute men, all of which play a slightly different role in the running gate process. But your glutes as a whole, as a group are responsible for. Propulsion, like moving you forward. they're responsible for stability, like making sure that you don't just topple over since you're balancing on one leg for your alignment, your running alignment, making sure that the forces are going through your joints properly. And of course, from for force absorption, actually absorbing the forces that the ground is placing on your body. And a lot of runners think, oh, If I do strength training, I should probably strengthen my core or my quads or my calves. And all of those things are definitely important. But your hips are really both the steering wheel and the shock absorbers of your stride. Like they do a lot of really important thing they like, they provide. The support and the propulsion to, to make sure that you're stable and not just wasting energy all over the place. And they also provide the main muscle. Your glute max is the main muscle to help propel you for it. It's the largest and strongest muscle in your body.

Kevin:

And I remember when I was working out in high school, like my two key exercises that I would do if I went to the gym,'cause I'd like to go to the gym with my dad and lift the big things that I would do for my legs. Were machines in the first place. And it was leg extensions for my quads. And then you'd lay down and you do hamstring curls. Like those were the two big ones that I would do. And then they had a thing for calves, but I, that, that machine was annoying, so I didn't even like using that one. But those were, that's what I was trying to hit, was like quads, hamstrings, and then maybe calves. And my sister had. had knee issues and so she had this like band that she would put around our door and do different, like swings to try and work her hips. My hips didn't bother me and therefore I didn't do hip things.

Angie:

Did your hip, did your sister have knee issues or hip issues? Hip issues, sorry. Okay. you said knee?

Kevin:

Yeah, no, she had hip issues, so she did hip exercises. My hips never bothered me. Yeah. So I didn't do the hip exercises.

Angie:

but your knees sometimes acted up. So you did quads and hamstrings'cause those were the muscles that were. Controlling your knee.

Kevin:

Yeah.'cause those all touch the knee.

Angie:

And that's what a lot of physical therapists even, back in those times, back in the day, really thought were the key for, to help. Treat knee pain. Like your VMO and your quads. Like these were some of the exercises that I learned early on in PT school and then really when I was in PT school, graduating PT school and like early on in my practice, more and more started coming out about the importance of the hips.

Kevin:

Yeah. Now that I think back on it when I was, when I would work out over the summer, there was a very cool machine That you like. You could. It looked like a clock, and you could move the pad to being in front of your knee or be, or in front of your thigh or behind your thigh, and you could essentially do knee lifts. Yeah. Or like like kickback exercises. And I would do those over the summer because I saw other people doing it, and that machine looked cool. That was literally the main reason I did it, is that machine looked cool and thinking back now, I was actually building hip strength when I did that.

Angie:

Yeah, that was actually a hip strengthening machine, which is fantastic. It just looked cool. Oh I'm so glad as a high school boy, you were looking cool in the gym with your kickbacks. I'm so disappointed sometimes that I didn't know you earlier.

Kevin:

Yes. Yeah, every, everything about that was good. Like the bleach blonde hair and the frosted tips. Yes. That, hold on. Lemme go to the gym with my dad. everything about that just would've been, that's adorable. Yes. And then I was trying to, bench press more than the bar. That was always a good,

Angie:

always adorable. Oh,

Kevin:

this, he's impressive.

Angie:

Always adorable. So running. Okay, so going back to Kevin's story since we're there. This is really where my interest in the hips and running started to come together. Kevin, do you wanna tell a little bit of your story, like in college, briefly of what your running experience was like in college and then what happened from there?

Kevin:

sure. Short, briefly, short version, I was trying to hang onto a team that I wasn't really capable of hanging onto. I ended up over training almost entirely.

Angie:

Meaning, meaning you felt like you couldn't keep up?

Kevin:

I could not physically keep up with the all Americans on my team because

Angie:

they were much faster.

Kevin:

I tried to go back to our recovery episode a few episodes ago. I was never recovering. Easy days were not recovery for me. Everything felt like it was hard. And that eventually led to my knees being in pain. And so then I'd go see the trainer and they were doing various things for me. Heat and stem, your favorites, my favorite. and it didn't fix. And so then I would have to take time off and I would come back and it wasn't a problem until I started building up my mileage and running really fast. And then my knees hurt again. Heat and stem didn't do anything for me. Time off. That was my cycle. And I did that until I literally, I stopped running and then I got back on my own. I was in control of my own training and when I tried to ramp it up post-college, I was living down in Miami by with you and. As I started to ramp my mileage up and train harder and harder, that achy, that same exact ache and pain in my knee, stabby pain right in the middle of my knee. Came back and I was like, you have to fix this. You are becoming a doctor. Please make my knee stop hurting.

Angie:

So that's what we did actually. So basically I was taking my newfound knowledge of the human body and body mechanics and kinesiology and running gate and all the things. And so I started putting Kevin through some tests. Because what one of the things that I realized in my education is that running is really a single leg sport like we started talking about at the beginning of the episode, and when you break down the running, when you look at the running gate cycle, you are spending. A hundred percent of the time on one leg. That's what difference differentiates running from walking in. Walking, you're, when you go from one foot to the other, there is a brief part, phase in time where both feet are on the ground, right? Where you're pushing off of one leg and the other leg is already on the ground running. There's a float phase. So there's this. Phase in the middle of the gate cycle where both feet are off the ground and that's what differentiates running from walking, especially race walking. if you've ever watched Olympic race walking and the awkwardness of Olympic race walking, you can see the importance of the hips because those race walkers, they sure as heck have a lot of hip movement.

Kevin:

There is an incredible amount of hip movement. Also, if you're gonna watch Olympic race walking, don't do it in slow motion. and just see how almost every step, they have a float phase and both feet are off the ground and every runner in the race is cheating.

Angie:

But we're gonna just ignore that for this podcast episode and just talk about, sorry, personal pet peeve. That's what's different between running and walking. So as a runner. You are spending a hundred percent of the time on one leg because when you are on one leg, the other leg is either kicking behind you or swinging forward in front of you. So your, all of your weight, all of your balance, all of your muscle on that side have to stabilize you and propel you forward. When you understand that and you understand how you are taking somewhere likely between 150 on the lower end, up to 200 steps per minute, total, so that if you divide by two, that's about 90, we'll just say 90 On average, if we take 180 is the average step per minute. That's 90 steps per leg, per minute. So depending on how long you're out there, that's a lot of steps. And so your. Basically your body has to stabilize itself. All of the muscles have to turn on, all of the muscles have to activate, all of the muscles have to push you forward in a split second, like literally a split second.

Kevin:

Yeah, if you say that your foot's landing. we do the numbers easy because it's 180. It's not the magic number, but the math works out really nice on it. So if it's 180, that means your foot's hitting the ground three times every second. That is, that's a really rapid time. Yeah. if you try and just stand on one leg and wave your arms around like you're running, if you have strong arm movement for a run, just standing still on one leg, you start feeling like you're falling down.

Angie:

That is actually a great exercise. I know it

Kevin:

is a wonderful exercise, but if you just do that and you feel like you're unstable, now imagine doing that. But your foot has to not only be on the ground, it has to transition from like the rear foot to the forefoot so it can push off, and it has to do that three times every single second, right? Exactly there's so much stability needed.

Angie:

And so the other thing too is that with every step, because you are essentially jumping from one leg to another over and over again, it's not just your body weight that's going through that leg. It's two to three times your body weight is the amount of force that's actually going up. Through your body, through that leg, all the way up your body. So your body has to be very strong and be able to stabilize two to three times your body weight. So if you weigh 150 pounds, that is 300 to 450 pounds of force that is going through your leg with every single step. And that requires a lot of dynamic pelvis control. It requires hip stability to help prevent knee collapse. So a lot of people think, oh, they see, oh, my knee's collapsing. I probably need. More support in my shoe. That's what a lot of people think. That's what we were trained, even as physical therapists, oh look, if there's too much pronation here, if there's too much knee collapse, we put a an arch support in and everything is fixed. When in reality, the main problem is a lack of dynamic control in the hip, and it's a lack of trunk control. Also, like people always think about the core and they think, oh, I've gotta do sit-ups, but sit-ups are actually not a great exercise for runners. I actually hate sit-ups for runners because it's not a functional way. That's not how your abs actually work. During running your abs are contracting isometrically to help stabilize you, your obliques and everything. All of these muscles in your. Corn in your trunk are most of the time, contracting isometrically, which means they're just bracing you. They're just stabilizing your body. They're not creating a lot of movement. You have some rotational movements from the shoulder and from the hips, that need to balance each other out, but there's a lot going on. And so going back to the story with Kevin. I realized that a lot of his knee pain, I'm like, lemme test his hips here. Because Kevin had very strong quads and very strong hamstrings.

Kevin:

Thank you.

Angie:

Yeah. So you know, kind of those muscles right around the knee on the front and the back that actually touched the knee like he was talking about. Those were strong. It's okay, that doesn't make sense'cause those muscles are strong. So where is this knee pain actually coming from?

Kevin:

It's because it looks cool when those muscles are strong. You get race photos, you know my favorite muscle. It you get. Like strong quads. And while your face is often gonna look a little funky during race photos, if they catch you just right and your quads are popping, your legs look great,

Angie:

your legs look great.

Kevin:

The, your hips, those aren't showing up in a video.

Angie:

Those are covered by your shorty shorts. They,

Kevin:

they're mostly covered by my shorts.

Angie:

Yeah, exactly. So I put Kevin this, I remember this. Day, do you remember this day? We were like, yes, I do in my bedroom, and you were lying on my bed. And I was like, okay, now lift your leg. I had him like lying on his side and I was testing out the strength in his hips, and he's what? was it the clamshell? Or was, okay. So I was asking Kevin to do a clamshell, so his knees were bent and I was asking him to keep his feet together and just open his knees, like a clamshell. And

Kevin:

I did. I totally did. I was perfect. But in order to do it. I rolled onto my back,

Angie:

so that was not perfect actually. So that was a complete compensatory pattern.'cause I like to use big words. So his body was compensating, right? Because the muscles that were supposed to do that motion, which are his hip external rotators, were so weak that they couldn't do it. So he was rotating his whole body to try to make his knee lift up

Kevin:

in an act of amazing bedside manner. She said, what are you doing? that is, I vividly remember this happening. I was trying to get my left knee to lift up off of my right knee in order to do it. I tilted my left shoulder back so that I could tilt backwards and my knees separated. I could actually do the clamshell. And you literally looked at me, you said, what are you doing? Don't move your shoulder and lift your knee up. And I'm like, it doesn't move like that. That was the issue. You're like, no, just lift your knee. I'm like. All right. I'm staring at my knee. I'm trying to make it move. I can't lift my knee. I literally, I couldn't do an unweighted clamshell. That was the problem without moving my shoulder. I thought I was doing them.

Angie:

to be fair, it was against gravity. gravity,

Kevin:

it was fine. That's and the

Angie:

weight of your leg?

Kevin:

Yes. With my huge quads. With those huge quads. Yes. We've already covered the huge quads. Yes.

Angie:

So your poor little hip rotators were not strong enough to overcome the massive. Volume of your quads. Alright,

Kevin:

so my glutes were withered is what we're covering here.

Angie:

Withered glutes. So I start poking Kevin, okay. Is actually what happened. I'm like, this muscle, I'm contract this muscle right here. So I'm poking it. and granted, like he does, he did at the time and still does have a nice and glute max. But like I was trying to get him. Thank you. You're welcome. He got a cute tush. but I was trying to get him to activate his gluteus medias, which is the main, like the hip external rotator. There's obviously some deeper external rotators, underneath all of that are not palpable. But I was trying to help him activate the muscle to actually rotate his hip. And so I was like putting my hand there and on the side of his hip and I'm like pressing there. I'm like, you feel this? This is the muscle I need you to activate. And he's I have no idea what you're talking about.

Kevin:

No, that is not exactly how that went. You tried to poke my glute Mead. Mead, yeah. And I started laughing hysterically. Oh, that's true. Because I am incredibly ticklish and that spot is ridiculously, so I'm laughing hysterically. So

Angie:

again, I say, what are you doing?

Kevin:

I'm like, stop poking me there. That's really ticklish. Which Andrew responded by poking me there Five more times. And she's okay, you have to stop laughing and breathe and now I'm going to gently press the muscle I was trying to give you, I

Angie:

was trying to give you biofeedback. You

Kevin:

were trying to give me biofeedback. I was trying to not wet myself on your bed. It's really'cause I was laughing so hard. it was funny. And then you think it's funny to continue tickling when I'm laughing already. So you may have continued palpating. No, but so you can both use big words.

Angie:

But the funny thing about it was like after Kevin's tickle bug gets activated, I don't know why I just called it a tickle bug, but your tickle trigger, Yes. Like once Kevin's. Tickle gets triggered. Sounds very inappropriate. For some reason

Kevin:

why? That seems fine to me

Angie:

then it's like anytime I touch him, no matter where it is on his body, he is so hypersensitive. So it's like we're, I was trying to get back to like my testing, me and my very serious PT students. Yeah, she had a notebook

Kevin:

and a clipboard,

Angie:

so we were trying to get back to my testing. And help him figure out how to activate this muscle. But I think we had to take a break because you just couldn't, you were laughing too hard.

Kevin:

I, we may have had to take a break and then you may have called your roommate in to show her that I couldn't do a clamshell. It is also very possible.

Angie:

that was super manly, right? you felt just like a total, manly men at that point, he

Kevin:

was a house full of ridiculously smart girls training to become doctors. Yeah. So that was, it was, I did not mind being a patient. I don't think any of the boyfriends of that house minded being practice patients. Yeah.

Angie:

and you're, you are great because you can see so many of your muscles. So Kevin was like our anatomy model in the process of it all too, because you could just take off your shirt and we could see lots of different muscles on you. Yes. Due to your lack of fat. Thank you. So Anyw who. Kind of the conclusion of that story is once we did finally get Kevin, able to activate that muscle, then I gave him some exercises to help strengthen his glute, especially his glute mead and his hip external rotators, which then allowed him to have more dynamic control of his hips and his pelvis, which then may made his knee pain go away. Because a lot of times what happens when runners have. A lack of hip strength when there's weakness in the hip stabilizers. You, we see a lot of these, compensation patterns. So things like I mentioned already, is the knee collapsing in? I had that one. Yes you did. so the knee collapsing in is, one of the most common things that we see. We also see rotation of the knee. So a lot of runners don't understand how to differentiate between the collapse and the rotation. Oftentimes they go together because it's the hip that's. Controlling both of those motions. Yeah. The

Kevin:

knee collapsing in is really easy to visually see. Yeah. If you've ever, if someone's ever taken a picture of you from straight on and the from the hip down to the knee is angled and from the knee to the ground is straight down, you are collapsing in. there's some high level. Female marathoners especially. Yeah. That have absurd knee collapsing in and they're setting world records, so there's ways to overcome, Yeah. But that it is such a clear sign.

Angie:

Yeah. It's definitely a clear sign and women are more prone to this versus men because we tend to have wider hip. And so we have what's called a wider Q angle, which is like the angle between the knee and the hip and the pelvis. And so the, we do have more incidents of this and it can be a normal gait deviation for some people, like Kevin mentioned, like it doesn't have to cause problems, but it can be a sign that there is weakness. And linked to that is also over pronation because when that knee collapses in, oftentimes the foot collapses as well. and then. There's also a pelvic drop that happens. So when all of your weight is on one side and you can have a pelvic drop or over pronation without the knee collapse as well. oftentimes a lot of these things are seen together, but basically when your in single leg stance, when all of your weight is on one leg, as your other leg is swinging through as you're running when. Your hip muscles have to stabilize that pelvis. If they are too weak, the hip drops down. So what is whatever leg you're currently standing on in, which is called stance, phase of gait, the pelvis will drop to the opposite side because the muscles on, say your, all of your weights on your left leg and your right leg is. Swinging through your left hip muscles are weak and so that pelvis, it just doesn't have control of it. So if you think about, like a table with a glass of water on it, the goal is to keep that table level and the muscle's job is to contract to keep the side of that table strong. And if they're weak, they just overstretch because they don't have the strength to hold onto it. And that table just tilts a little bit, which will allow that cup of water to slide down to the opposite side.

Kevin:

Okay. So I was trying to f. Do this myself as you were going through that. So can you repeat one more time? if I'm landing on my right foot. Okay. I'm still in, in stance phase. Is my right hip lower than my left hip?

Angie:

if you're landing on me, my right

Kevin:

foot is on the ground. Okay. Is my right hip low or, my right hip is high.

Angie:

High.

Kevin:

My right hip's high.

Angie:

Yeah. So your left hip is dropping if like it's whatever leg is on the ground. That those are the muscles that are active because those are the muscles. your other muscles are a active also trying to help the leg swing through. But in this specific gait deviation with the pelvic drop, we're seeing that the pelvis drops to the opposite side. Okay. Got it. Okay. Along with that too, can be a what's called a lateral trunk lean, which means you're leaning towards one is one side or the other to, again, a lot of these things all go together because when your pelvis drops or your knee collapses, your body just naturally compensates. Your body is amazing because its goal is to always keep you upright and moving forward. And so your body just naturally makes a lot of these compensations and that's why a lot of these things are tied together. They can be, Separated, but oftentimes you see a lot of these things in combination. and then overriding would be another compensation as well, because people are trying to run faster and they're not able to. get their leg back underneath them quick enough. So there's a lack of strength in the hip. that can lead to Overstriding as well.

Kevin:

And Overstriding is only gonna make bigger issues because if you over stride, you're gonna actually increase the forces going through your body because you then have more braking when the foot lands out in front of you. Even just going at faster paces, which was often why. I didn't have the same injuries in college over the summer because I wasn't running at the same speeds. Yeah. I could handle a lot of easy miles, which, I can still handle a lot of easy miles. Yeah. But I've also actually have some strength in inappropriate places now, but I could handle easy miles over the summer. I could even. Some speed over the summer. I just couldn't handle that much. It was when everything became so fast that it, I didn't, I never had the time to recover. And then it just, it snowballed,

Angie:

right? Because the faster you run, the more force is generated and the more force is going through your hips and your knees and your core and all that, and the quicker you fatigue also. And so as your muscles fatigue, whether you're running faster or you're running longer. When those muscles get tired, they're not doing as good of a job stabilizing your body and also propelling you forward. Which is why oftentimes your pace slows down. But since they're not doing a good job stabilizing you, they're also not doing a great job absorbing all of those forces that are going through your body. And so there's more wear and tear on the knee and the other joints, the hip, the lower back. That's another piece of that. people don't always think about'cause there's a lot of common injuries. That are linked to weak hips, so things like it, band syndrome, glute medias or piriformis pain, trocanter, bursitis like that, hip bursitis, runner's knee, like what is what Kevin really had, issues with Achilles shin splints. Low back pain also is another very common injury due to weak hips because your hips are not doing their job. So more force. Is going through your lower back, your spine, so then your back extensors and your lower back muscles kick on are trying to do jobs that they're not supposed to be doing because they're trying to essentially help the hips out, right? Because the hips aren't strong enough to do their job. So the lower back muscles and other muscles like the hip flexors and those kinds of things try to tighten up and stabilize the area and do the work that they're really not. Supposed to be doing.

Kevin:

Alright. I got one question off the whole list and I think I have the answer to it also, so I'm just gonna ask and answer my question and see if I'm smart enough. Love it. Let's do it. Okay. Achilles issues, you're like, you're a whole joint removed from the hips. Like you're below the knee, two joints down. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're all the way down at like the ankle. Yeah. When you get to the Achilles is the issue with Achilles inju injuries. Issues that your calves are doing too much work because they're trying to overcompensate from weakness up the chain.

Angie:

Yes. That is one of the reasons, like that's, there's definitely multiple issues, but that is one of the big things is that because your glute max isn't pushing you off, if you have weak, a weaker glute max, and so you're not getting enough hip extension to power you. Then your gastroc and your soleus, your calf muscles, then it's their job to push off even harder.

Kevin:

Oh. Then so essentially, which is also gonna cause the shin splints, it's just a matter of which side of the, your lower leg the pain shows up on. Yeah.'cause you're trying to toe off entirely with your foot instead of your glute. That's not helping.

Angie:

And so this is like one of the things that happens with the body, and this is again, one of the reasons that so many runners get injured because they don't have the proper strength in order to absorb the force, especially when they start to increase some aspect of their performance. Whether that's distance, which is where a lot of it shows up when people start to train for. Longer races, like half marathons, all of a sudden they don't understand why am I getting injured? I was fine. I've run for years and I've been fine. And it's yeah, your body was strong enough if you're doing five Ks and 10 Ks and doing lower distances. But as soon as you start ramping up the mileage and your muscles start fatiguing and you're not strength training or you're not giving your body enough time. And recovery to catch up to the new load that you're placing on it. Then some of these things start to break down.

Kevin:

it's a very easy trap to fall into because it feels like a 5K involves more power. I'm going faster. I need the power. So strength training logically makes more sense for something shorter and faster like a 5K. And why would I need to strength train as much? I don't need as much of. Power to do something longer and slower like a marathon. And so I think a lot of people go into a marathon thinking they need less strength training than something as fast as a 5K and that doesn't make any sense. that was my assumption is I did not need to strength train as much if I was going longer distances. But you arguably need strength.

Angie:

Because your pace is slower, because your pace is slower,

Kevin:

like therefore you don't need the same level of power. But the problem is you're out there for so long that the muscles fatigue. So if you can increase your power, then when you're operating at sub maximal efforts for a long period of time, you can keep operating for a long period of time before your body just breaks down and says, we can't do it anymore.

Angie:

Because one of the benefits of power training and strength training is increased muscle activation and muscle. Recruitment, right? So you have more muscle fibers that are activated, so you have more muscle fibers trying to do the same job. And when you have, think about, I always like to use the analogy of lifting up a couch. You could probably lift up a couch by yourself or with two people, but if you've got four people on the job, it's gonna be a lot easier and you could probably lift it up a lot. More repetitions, right? Like a lot more times when you have four or five people doing that job. And so it's the same thing with muscles. It's like when you strength train and when you powertrain, you're recruiting more muscles and more muscle fibers within those muscles. so you're just able to endure longer because you have more muscles doing the job. So the job gets shared across more. I don't wanna say people, but fibers. More

Kevin:

fibers, yeah, more fibers to share the load.

Angie:

Exactly. And so if your hips are weak, like yes, you could end up with an injury. Or you could also start noticing things before the injury shows up. Things like feeling sloppy on your long runs, like just feeling like your body don't have as much control. noticing that you're losing your f running form, especially when you get tired. You might notice that your pace is slowing down even though your breathing is fine. Like your heart rate's fine, your breathing's fine. Why is my pace slowing down? It could be because your muscles are fatiguing, right? having difficulty with hills, especially because your body needs more strength on the hills, especially from the glutes. Your glutes are the main muscles that are gonna help propel you up hills. And if your glutes aren't doing their job, then again, this is one of those instances where your calves are gonna kick in more and you might end up with. Other issues like in the calf and the Achilles because you don't have as much power and push off from the glutes, and so other muscles have to jump in and take up the slack.

Kevin:

Yeah, that feeling sloppy on a long run is how I know that I'm slacking too much on strength training. If I finish a long run that I did all at a comfortable pace, not a long run that I put stuff into, but an all at comfortable pace and I feel just spent and I feel like I'm not getting my knees right. Foot's not moving smoothly behind me. I'm like dragging myself in. That's not usually a fitness issue. That's a strength issue almost every time for me. That is gonna be, I'm not spending enough time in the weight room.

Angie:

Yeah. and speaking of that, we probably should, you should probably be spending some more time in the weight room. Yes, that's true. Leading up to your a hundred mile race in January.

Kevin:

Yes, that's true. Yes,

Angie:

that's true. And I wanna take a minute just to Note why this is even more important if you are a runner over 40. and it's how, like this is important for runners of all ages, right? No matter how old you are. We have our high school kids doing hip strengthening. I do single leg strengthening, especially with all of our high school kids. So this is important no matter your age. And if you're a runner over 40, it matters even a little bit more be, especially if you're a woman, because when your estrogen levels decline in perimenopause and menopause, there is a reduction in tendon stiffness. There's a reduction in muscle mass, and there's also a reduction in neuromuscular efficiency. So your body's just not operating the same that it did, and so you have to be even more intentional to. Do these things to make sure that you're doing the proper exercises to help promote increased tendon stiffness, increased muscle mass, and increased neuromuscular efficiency so that your body's, you can make up for some of those natural losses due to the hormone changes that's. That are going on.

Kevin:

Yeah. I'd argue that hips are naturally weak in a lot of distance runners. And so if you start with already in like the yellow danger ish zone and then you add, a decline in estrogen and that. It just naturally reduces muscle mass, then you're gonna start causing problems real, real quickly.

Angie:

Yeah, exactly. And this is one of the reasons why single leg control is one of the pillars of inside of our strength program. it's in all of our running plans and it is extremely important and there's really. Like four main aspects that we have to look at when it comes to single leg control. The first is your overall strength. So this is getting on a full body strength program, things like squats and lunges and split squats to really strengthen your glute max things, to doing exercises to help strengthen your glute mead, your deep rotators, your lateral hip muscles, all of these things. It are very important just with overall strength. You also need to be doing stability, okay? or your single leg control includes like helping your body stabilize itself, a, being able to maintain that level pelvis that we're talking about and helping to maintain knee alignment. As your training load increases, as the load on your body, whether that's speed or distance or time, like whatever it is, you're increasing the load that you're increasing on your body. Your body has to be strong enough in order to stabilize itself to help absorb tho those forces. And minimize the wear and tear on the joints.

Kevin:

So one of my favorite exercises on this, and you can correct me if I'm putting the exercise in the wrong spot, but one of my favorite exercises for stability is a single leg deadlift. And it also highlights a lack of stability on a lot of kids on our CrossCountry team. Yeah. Because they have the hamstring strength to do a deadlift, but as soon as they go onto a single leg, they're hip. Of the foot that's not planted on the ground just flares up. They essentially look like me trying to do the clamshells back in the day. They open up so much because they can't maintain their pelvis at an even level. As soon as they put weight onto one foot, they're completely wobbling all over the place and they're like, no. I have to hold the heavier weights. And it's no. You can't hold the heavy weights, your body's not able to actually stabilize that. Yeah. And you're always talking about make sure that you have a heavy enough weight, that the exercise is challenging for you, and they don't feel like it's challenging to pick it up, but it's so challenging for them to pick it up and not wobble all over the place. Which. Is why it looks like they're wobbling all over the place when they head out and run.

Angie:

And I think that the other part about it is when they're doing the exercise wrong, maybe it doesn't feel as challenging because they're using a lot of other muscles to compensate for the weakness. Is it compensatory? It's compensatory the compensatory patterns if you wanna use the full fun term. The other thing that we're looking at too, with single leg control is coordination, which involves your nervous system. It's the message from your brain to your body, and then obviously from your body back to your brain. So your nervous system is important to help control like the timing of your movement, your balance, your motor patterns. So like Kevin was mentioning with the single leg deadlift, that's just a fantastic exercise. That is one of my favorite exercises for runners. And yes, it does highlight stability, but it really highlights all of these things. It highlights stability. strength and coordination because you need to have the proper motor pattern, otherwise your body is going to compensate if you don't understand what a hinge movement is, which is what we're shooting for. When it comes to a deadlift or a single leg deadlift, we want a hinge pattern happening. We want that motion and that control really coming from the glutes and the hips. A lot of people will overuse their back muscles and you'll see them round their backs or open up their hips because they're not strong enough to maintain the proper motor pattern. So good single leg control is the ability to maintain alignment in the body, proper alignment, and generate force without those compensations. And this is where, it gets really important to understand where you are with your. Strengthen your single leg stability, because if you're compensating, then there's a weakness there, right? So the key then is to find that weakness and then you do targeted exercises to help address that weakness so that your body can operate. The way that it's meant to. And that can also help to decrease pain in a lot of areas. A lot of people have a lot of tightness or a lot of pain, and it's because again, those muscles are trying to kick in and do jobs that they're not supposed to be doing.

Kevin:

So this is where people can fall into the pa. The issue of they're doing strength training. But no one's checking to make sure their form is actually working correct. Or they're not even sure what the correct form is. Yeah, so they're doing it, they're upping weight from, every couple of weeks the weight goes up. they're increasing what appears to be strength, but they're doing it with so many compensations that they're not actually working the muscles that need to be worked. It seems like they're doing exercises that should be targeting hips, but they're doing it with. Poor form. And so they're strengthening their back, which is not really helping them in this case, or,

Angie:

or they're not strengthening their back and they're actually just putting more strain on their back. Y

Kevin:

strengthening slash hurting their back is really what's happening.

Angie:

Exactly. the place that you're gonna wanna start out is by testing your hip and single leg stability. So I would love, I'm gonna give you guys a couple suggestions for some tests, and these are tests that we give our clients as soon as they join our program because it's really important for us to figure out where people are, where, I give single leg exercises to every single client no matter where, you know, no matter if they have weakness or if they're doing pretty well. Even if people come in, which I will tell you the number of people that have come into the program without some sort of single leg weakness, I'm pretty sure is zero. I don't, I like to avoid generalizations, but I'm pretty sure that there's not one person in the program, like including myself, right? I'm including myself in this. I'm not saying, oh yeah, my hips are amazing. my hips don't lie either, but your

Kevin:

hips are amazing.

Angie:

but. we all have some sort of hip weakness and I think it's important for us to understand like that's, this is part of it, right? This is just something that we're gonna be continuously working on. So here are a couple of my favorite tests. So the first test, and this one's one of my faves, is the single leg sit to stand. So basically you're sitting in a chair and you stand, like you use one leg, you lift one leg, and you're all of your weight is on one leg, and you try to stand up from that chair, and then you try to sit back down in a controlled way. And I would highly suggest that if you're gonna do any of these tests, or when you do these tests, you film yourself. So set up your iPhone so that you're filming yourself so that you can go back and watch this. I used to tell people to do it in front of a mirror, but. iPhones are way better because you can do it. and then you can go back and actually watch yourself doing it. And you can look and see, okay, are your hips level or are you getting one of your hips dropping? Is your knee straight or is that knee collapsing in? Do you notice that your foot is like gripping the ground? because your, you don't have enough strength in the hip, so your foot and your leg muscle, your lower leg muscles are trying to compensate, right? So look at the quality of that single leg sit to stand. One step up from that would be the single leg squat. So this is again, just. Lifting one leg. If you're standing up, lift one leg, balance on one leg and then try to squat and then come back up. Same thing. Film yourself. Notice, where's your knee tracking? Is it collapsing in? Is your pelvis staying level? Is your torso upright? Or are you leaning to one side? Are you co compensating by leaning to a side? test number three would be the step down test. So if you're honest. Step and you just step down forward. you can actually do a forward step down and also a side step down. And again, filming yourself, looking at where your hips are, is your pelvis level, where's your trunk? where's your knee tracking? Are you noticing some, any collapse at the foot? and then test number four would be the single leg bridge hold. So where you're lying on your back, excuse me. Lying on your back with both knees bent, and then you lift. You straighten one knee so that one foot is not touching the ground, and then you lift your hips up. So you're just pushing through one foot and you lift up your hips and try to just hold it there. So can you keep your hips level? Do you notice your hip dropping? How long are you able to hold it? Do you notice any hamstring, cramping? There's a lot of people that when they do this, their hamstring cramps up on them because their hamstrings are compensating, and that's a really. Common muscle that tries to kick in and help when your glutes are weak.

Kevin:

Yeah, it's fun. If you try to do single leg bridges after you've already done exercises that highlight your glutes because you're like, I can totally do single leg bridges, they're fine. But then you do a couple of exercises that strengthen the glutes and they're exhausted by the end of the workout, and suddenly you do that same single leg bridge and your hamstring just seizes up on you. It's it's an interesting one. It's fatigue. The only thing that I would add to that is. You said talk about filming yourself from straight on. the camera would be set up directly in front of you. Yeah. So that you can see if your hips are staying level. Yeah. Just for some clarity there.

Angie:

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you adding that in. and then the good news is a lot of these tests can also be used as exercises, So then this is one of the ways, once you figure out where you are. then it's okay, now do I do about it? What exercises do I need to add in order to improve my hip strength and my single leg control? So we go back to the foundations, we go to glute bridges, we go to single leg glute bridges, we go to clamshells. Kevin's favorite exercise, clamshells that, have gotten a lot of hate from some of the online physical therapists'cause they're like. Clamshells are not functional exercises for runners, which is true. there's never a point in running where you're lying on the ground and lifting your leg. But if you are having a hard time activating that muscle like Kevin did, they're a very good foundational exercise. That's not the same exercise that you should continue doing for more, but it is a good activation exercise. Do you still do Those activation exercises before you run, like every time you run.

Kevin:

Not before, every time I run. Now that I don't have a hernia anymore, I don't need all those activation exercises before every run.

Angie:

So t talk a little bit about what we're talking about first. Okay.

Kevin:

So bef give us

Angie:

a background.

Kevin:

Sure. what, two, two years ago I had a hernia. And when I would head out to run, that led to all sorts of compensatory patterns. Yes, it did. Okay, perfect. and my biggest issue, what I figured out is if I did a whole bunch of exercises, all of these guys basically is sideline hip head deduction, clamshells. Quaded hip extensions. What looks like, the fire hydrant is what I always call the one thing. Yeah. if I did a whole bunch of things for my hips, I could go out and run eight to 10 miles without a problem, and if I didn't do a full set of exercises somewhere in the middle of the run, I would get that stabbing pain from my hernia and. I don't know what the connection is because I'm not a doctor, but I'm sure that you're like, the obvious connection is because you had the wi weakness in here, and so you're over-relying on muscles that are getting weakened, that are not warmed up to begin with, that are overstretched and all these things, and so essentially because of where my hernia was and the weakness in all the hip ex hip muscles. It would then at some point in time, essentially without getting graphic pop and cause like stab in the gut with a knife pain.

Angie:

Yeah, that doesn't sound fun. Yeah,

Kevin:

it was not.

Angie:

Yeah. So by Kevin doing some like mobility opening his hips up, like getting those muscles firing and activated, like there, there's a little bit of question mark and out there about hip activation exercises. Like your muscles are always active, but. There are sometimes, like with Kevin's example that we used where those muscles aren't firing properly, they're not firing at the proper time, or they're firing in on a, in a delayed fashion, right? So they're really not doing their job. So the more you can target some of those muscles to get the activation patterns in the motor patterns firing. Better, more, more timely and stronger activation or stronger, contractions, that's gonna be a good thing. other single leg strength exercises that I love, like I mentioned, the single leg deadlift is one of my favorite exercises for runners. step ups and step downs. Also fantastic glute strengthening exercises, especially if you're someone that doesn't like squats or can't do squats. Step-ups actually activate the glute muscles. Even better than squats do.'cause again, they're a single leg exercise. And because of like physics and the lever arm and the fourth generation, all that good stuff, step-ups are a super effective exercise. Bulgarian split squats, reverse lunges, single leg glute bridges, all of these things are really important strength exercises for us to be doing as runners. And then to take it one step further. We also wanna make sure that our glutes are creating power for us, and so that's when we start to integrate plyometrics and power progressions into the workout. You don't wanna do these too early. Because they are, again, a lot more force that's going through the hip. So you wanna build, have a foundation of strength first, and then you can start to add in some light plyometrics. But things like lateral hops, like side to side hops, single leg hops are very good for you. Bounding, skipping these kinds of things to help with power generation. and really power is strength plus speed, right? It's the ability to. Yeah. Use your strength in a speedy way, essentially. physics teacher,

Kevin:

I'll take

Angie:

it, bring the power in.

Kevin:

it's work over time.

Angie:

Okay. It's work over time. So again, it's strength, but Yeah. Strength and speed. I know. But if you

Kevin:

change the, all the terms that is, that's force and velocity, that's also gonna work for

Angie:

you. Yeah. That works for us. Perfect. it's one of those things that is. Super important, right? And so hopefully by the end of this episode you really understand how important your hip strength is and how important it is for you to do single leg exercises as a runner. That's really our goal here. With this episode is really to help bring that awareness so that you can start doing some of these things in your weekly routine.

Kevin:

Yeah, and you listed a whole lot of good exercises there and you moved into the plyometrics. Plyometrics, because you're hopping, it's even more than running that power. We talked about two to three times your body weight when you're bounding. It's even more than that, which my suggestion if you're really. Doing some bounding and some skipping. Try and find an incline because that reduces the impact on your body Also, like if you're gonna get into really trying to bound for some distance, if you do it up a hill, you're gonna then make it a little bit nicer on your body also.

Angie:

Yeah. And then of course, whenever we are doing single leg strength, we can't forget about mobility. Anytime, like strength and mobility go hand in hand because it's silly for you to just focus on strength if you don't have adequate range of motion in your joints, like it's important, like mobility is the, your joint's ability to move fluidly throughout your full range of motion. And so this is where things like hip flexor tightness. Plays a role, right? Like it's very important for you to try to open up your hip flexors and improve your hip flexor mobility, which is the muscle on the front of your hip in order for you to activate your glutes. Because if your hips are really tight, it's gonna be harder for you to activate. I shouldn't say activate. It's gonna be harder for you to get the proper amount of contraction in your glutes because your hip extension is gonna be limited by the tightness in your hip flexors, right? Things like. Thoracic mobility working on, the mobility of your mid back and upper back is also going to enhance your hip stability because of the rotational pattern, because your shoulders. And your upper body offset, not offset, counterbalance your lower body and your hips. So if you are limited with your thoracic mobility, it's going to limit your hip mobility. So all of these things are connected. Your ankle mobility is going to influence your knee alignment during single leg things like running. So if you don't have the proper amount. Of movement in your ankle, then the muscles around your ankle, which also attach up near the knee, those are going to again, go into compensatory patterns. I think that must be the,

Kevin:

that is the phrase of today is that

Angie:

the drinking, the game of episode number 436, quite possibly. how often should you be doing these things? At least two to three strength sessions a week. I like to include single leg strength in all of our. Strength sessions for our clients. I like to te there's certain, when I design a strength program for our clients, it, I tick certain boxes and single leg strength is one of the boxes that I make sure that we incorporate at least somehow in every single exercise. So maybe that's through a step up. Maybe that's a split squat. Maybe it's a single leg calf raise. Maybe it's a single leg GL bridge or a. Single leg, sit to stand or a single leg deadlift. There's so many different variations, that we're definitely working on single leg strength in every single one. so keeping in mind, actually, I'm gonna stop that. So if you are someone that wants the exact exercises to do, you want step-by-step guidance, you wanna a plan, I'd invite you to go over to real life runners.com and check out our different coaching options. if you're want, to test the waters before you commit to anything, we have our 30 day running reset, and that's gonna give you. A running plan, a strength plan, plus lessons on, mindset and nutrition and recovery to help, those five really important things that you need to strengthen as a runner if you're someone that is ready to commit. We have our coaching program, our group coaching, our one-on-one coaching, and again, all of our plans include all of the strength exercises that you need, including all of the single leg strength exercises and balance exercises that you need. And, it's really fun. Not only do these things benefit your running, but they also benefit you in real life. And I think that's one of my favorite things hearing from our clients, is not just how their running is improving and how their pain is decreasing and they're running without knee pain that they've had for 25 years, but also, how much. They, how they, it was benefiting, them getting up and down the ladder, getting the Christmas decorations out of the attic, or getting up and down off of the floor when they're playing with their grandkids, right? Because these things affect your single leg balance and strength and control is really important in all aspects of your life, not just running.

Kevin:

Every aspect of Christmas decorations really relies on the strength training that I've been working for the rest of the year

Angie:

in the hip rotation, getting the box up and down, and I

Kevin:

mean, twisting, trying to get some of those boxes into the small opening that is the. Open the attic space. They're very heavy boxes and you have to, it's like threading the needle with them while balancing yourself on the ladder. And at some point it is in fact a single leg stance so that you can get yourself and the box up and down the ladder. Yeah. So yes, it is. It is all there. It's perfection right

Angie:

there. So head over to single or head over to real life runners.com, to check out our coaching options and the ways that we can help you to take the things from the podcast and actually show you how to apply those in your everyday training in your everyday life. we would love to be your coaches and be your guide, so we. Head over there and check it out. And if you found this episode helpful, we would love it if you were to leave us a comment on Apple Podcasts or leave us a comment on Spotify, and a rating and review to help other runners find the podcast and help us to continue to grow and help other people around the whole world. So as always, thanks for joining us. This has been The Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 436. Now get out there and run your life.