There's a Difference: Jogging vs. Running

It's very easy to get confused these days when searching for ways to get leaner, improve your conditioning or finding a that diet works best for you. There's a lot of information out there, all of which can be at your hands in as little as one second after going to Google. Sometimes when you think you're doing something good for yourself, you might actually not be doing yourself any good at all. You had the intention of one thing, but you're actually doing another. What you think is a difference in wording, might actually be a different concept all together. What I want to do in this series of posts is illustrate the difference between what one actually means and what one is actually doing. Let's start with one of my personal favorites.

Running vs. Jogging

When most people say they are going for a run, they should actually say they are going for a jog. No difference between the two, you say? I say there's an enormous difference. Jogging is an incomplete movement pattern. It's like doing half a chin up or not working through a full range of motion when bench pressing. There's never any real extended stride. The arm and leg movement is short without any real full range of motion. Some refer to it as as "speed shuffling" or "speed limping". I have to agree. No one really ever looks good when jogging. They either look like they are hurting or can't move properly. The movement just doesn't look right. It's not a walk, but it's not a run. So I guess it's called a jog. Take the incomplete movement pattern repeated many times over the course of a "jog" and there is an injury waiting to happen.

Now if we look at running, we look at a completely different movement pattern. Running is the ability to "move rapidly on foot". There's a stride phase. There's a recovery phase. There's an involvement of the glutes and hamstrings that you don't find in jogging. You're moving through a more complete movement pattern than the jogging pattern and it looks a whole lot better. It is all about how you look, right? And if it's not about how you look, how about the chances of getting injured being reduced? A real running pattern usually is going to consist of a longer stride. A longer stride means less repetitions of that movement over the course of a run. Less repetitions could mean less chance of injury.

Even Nike has their own thoughts on the difference between the two: