There’s a sweet spot. Go too easy and they get screwed up and go too hard and they screw up.
But it’s true that being reasonably active helps a ton. Someone I know who complained of joint pain as they retired claims it went away as his leisure time caused him to walk all over the place, and now he’s 70 with no joint pain. Closest he got was when we spent two hours in a crawlspace working on some frozen pipes and complained that his back hurt a bit and wondered if it was because he was old. No, even the 20 year old hurt after waddling around hunched over in freezing temperatures for a couple of hours.
Doesn’t seem to be strictly true, but I do think it’s complicated. Running is awful for your knees if they’re injured or you have some sort of congenital skeletal issue. If you’re just sedentary, it’s awful for your knees if you do too much too soon.
Otherwise it seems to strengthen them. I will grant that it’s pretty hard to truly run easy enough and build up slowly enough. Takes patience and some trial and error in my experience. I skateboarded through my teens and 20s and had all sorts of nagging pains that have gone away completely after a couple years of consistent running, as an anecdote.
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There’s a sweet spot. Go too easy and they get screwed up and go too hard and they screw up.
But it’s true that being reasonably active helps a ton. Someone I know who complained of joint pain as they retired claims it went away as his leisure time caused him to walk all over the place, and now he’s 70 with no joint pain. Closest he got was when we spent two hours in a crawlspace working on some frozen pipes and complained that his back hurt a bit and wondered if it was because he was old. No, even the 20 year old hurt after waddling around hunched over in freezing temperatures for a couple of hours.
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Just don’t do it wrong though, because then you will ruin everything.
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Running is about the worst thing you can do to your knees.
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Doesn’t seem to be strictly true, but I do think it’s complicated. Running is awful for your knees if they’re injured or you have some sort of congenital skeletal issue. If you’re just sedentary, it’s awful for your knees if you do too much too soon.
Otherwise it seems to strengthen them. I will grant that it’s pretty hard to truly run easy enough and build up slowly enough. Takes patience and some trial and error in my experience. I skateboarded through my teens and 20s and had all sorts of nagging pains that have gone away completely after a couple years of consistent running, as an anecdote.
https://longevity.stanford.edu/lifestyle/2023/08/29/is-running-bad-for-your-knees-research-says-no/