The Strength Running Podcast

Impact, Force, and Load: Exploring the Real Drivers of Injuries with Professor Brent Edwards

26 snips
Mar 5, 2026
Brent Edwards, a kinesiology professor and biomechanics expert who studies how mechanical load affects musculoskeletal health. He explains the difference between short impact spikes and longer stance-phase loads. He discusses how load magnitude outweighs repetition, how pacing and stride affect tissue stress, wearable impact metrics, surface stiffness, and bone-stimulating exercises.
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INSIGHT

Impact Peak Is Not The Main Injury Driver

  • Impact forces are a very short event (~50 ms) at footstrike and are not the primary driver of running injuries.
  • Larger, sustained loading during the rest of stance (250 ms) produces much greater muscle and skeletal stress that aligns with injury risk.
INSIGHT

Magnitude Trumps Repetition For Tissue Damage

  • Tissue damage scales far more with load magnitude than with cycle count; a single larger load can be worse than many smaller loads.
  • Rule of thumb: reducing peak force ~10% can increase allowable cycles by ~100x in biological tissues.
ADVICE

Be Far More Cautious Changing Speed Than Mileage

  • Prioritize cautious changes in intensity over small increases in volume to reduce injury risk.
  • Laboratory and material-science data suggest increasing speed by 10% may raise injury risk far more than increasing distance by 10%.
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