Running Might Actually Be Bad for You
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Why You Cant Stop Running, According to Psychologists
If you’re a runner, you probably know the feeling: You take up jogging and go running every second day, and pretty soon you’re making gains, knocking off three miles, no problem. So you then step it up to six miles, and soon you start running every day. Before long, you’re scouting around for any half marathon that will take you.
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Gains, right? Well, not necessarily. What if all those miles, logged on fitness apps and shared on social media, are doing you more harm than good? What if you, in fact, have a running problem? According to psychologists Andrew Wood and Martin Turner from Staffordshire University in the U.K., it’s a lot more common than you think.
When Getting Healthy Becomes Unhealthy
So when does running become bad for you? Wood and Turner say it’s when your relationship to exercise starts changing. You no longer run because you love it, but to beat yourself. And in the process you form something of an addiction to running.
“The danger with this situation is that your self-worth is becoming attached to running," the two wrote for a piece in The Conversation. Wood and Turner cite research in the piece that suggests people who define themselves as an exerciser or runner are in greater danger of becoming dependent on exercise.
“Running is now part of who you are,” they wrote. “If you don't run, who are you? If you quit or reduce running, then all of those nice things you are experiencing will drop away. People value you and you value yourself because of your running. Now you have to carry on running to maintain your self-worth. It makes sense to you that the more you run, the better you feel, you have greater social standing and with it more self-worth. A belief forms: ‘I have to keep running or I'll be a worthless nobody.’”
This destructively reliant relationship is a danger across all kinds of exercise, but it is particularly bad when it comes to endurance exercise regimes such as running. People pin their self-worth to their performance.
“Athletes … start to think, ‘If I play well I am a complete success; if I play poorly then I am a complete failure,’” Wood told Insider on March 25.
Are You at Risk?
Basically, if you do endurance training, you’re at a higher risk of developing an unhealthy relationship with exercise — particularly as training loads and hours increase, or the level of competition increases. (Although according to Wood and Turner, weightlifters are also susceptible to developing a destructive take on training.)
Wood told Insider that those who pin their worth to their exercise achievements take on “a heavy and unrelenting burden, coupled with unrealistic self expectations that they must achieve, otherwise they consider themselves a complete failure.”
It’s damaging psychologically of course, but Wood says there’s also a very serious risk of overtraining.
What’s the Problem?
You might think, “If I’m addicted to running, it at least gets me out on the track. And it gets me fit.” But this kind of attitude eventually leads to considerable emotional and physical exhaustion.
Besides, it’s illogical. Why? In The Conversation piece, Wood and Turner give three reasons: First, it hinders your well-being rather than helps it; second, it’s short-term and guilt-based motivation; and third, it’s simply not grounded in reality — you need to breathe and eat, not run.
So how do you get over it? Wood and Turner recommend that you delete a few of those running apps and stop posting all your athletic success on social media platforms. Instead, try to keep a log to reflect on your achievements without the need for recognition and approval. Also, remember that running is a choice and make a decision to stop measuring your self-worth through your actions.
“Being a good runner doesn’t make you a good person,” Wood and Turner wrote, “just as being a bad runner doesn’t make you a bad person.”
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http://bit.ly/2WrfIpH March 27, 2019 at 12:14AM BruceDayne, Matt Shea March 27, 2019 at 09:22AM
