Just a quick post this time with some advice that I took from research a few years ago that changed my running forever.

In the early days of my running life, I was overweight, had a low cadence with big, slow steps and I regularly suffered from a stitch. I’ve come a long way with my running form over the years and I’ll be posting more about cadence in the near future. However, when suffering from these regular stitches, what I didn’t realise was that along with my weight and cadence, my breathing was a problem too.

Having researched the causes of a stitch and the ways that I could fix it. What I found was that a stitch is primarily caused by internal organs including the stomach, spleen and liver pulling on the diaphragm along the tendons that connect them. The real problem comes from the impact of each footstep with the ground as this causes the pulling to be worse, especially when we breathe out (this is when your core is relaxed more). Most people when they run, breathe in and out in equal proportions meaning that we breathe out when a particular foot hits the ground, repeatedly. For example, if breathing in takes the same amount of time as 4 steps and breathing out takes the same amount of time as 4 steps, then the same foot will be hitting the ground at the point when you start breathing out every time. This repetition can be enough to cause a stitch.

The subsequent advice I followed (and beware, it requires some concentration at first) is to breathe in and out in unequal proportions. I’ve therefore trained myself to do the following: Breathe in for 3 steps (right, left, right); Breathe out for 2 steps (left, right); Breathe in for 3 steps (left, right, left); Breathe out for 2 steps (right, left) and so on.

What this achieves is that I am breathing out on the impact of an alternative foot each time. This, in turn, distributes the load on the tendons attached to the diaphragm more evenly, preventing the strain that causes a stitch. As I said earlier, it requires concentration at first and may take a number of runs to get into the habit, but once you’ve mastered it, you’ll reap the benefits for years to come.

Try it out and let me know how you get on.