As an Elite, or beginner runner or Race walker, you likely went through the frustration of one or several injuries.
And beside the rehab, the big question is about “how did I get into that?” did I over train or is it something else? But then what is it?
And the next question is “when is it going to re-occur?”
Of course, some injury comes from our biomechanics (the way we are running), or our kinetic chain (you might have a weak part).
But with a good training approach and common sense, there are a lot of injuries you can avoid.
Here are some tips.
Conditioning and strengthening
I talked in a previous article about the benefit of a good conditioning and strengthening program.
For instance the lack of strength increases the risk of injury.
Every time you are training, you place a lot of stresses in your tendons, muscles and ligaments.
A strengthening program should focus mainly on developing eccentric strength, using progressively faster speeds of movement to increase the forces that the muscles can handle. This type of program is ‘functional’, which means that it involves the same type of contraction of the muscles that occurs during running, and so should have greater benefits for injury prevention and rehabilitation.
Training and progression:
One of the most important training principles to avoid injury is ‘gradual progression’.
Whatever you are doing, do it with progressive steps. Here are some tips to give muscles, ligaments and tendons time to increase their strength to cope with the extra stress.
1. Mileage: Don’t increase your weekly mileage more than 10%; if you usually run 30 miles a week go to 35 the next week then move on to 40. You then will build a progressive mileage your body can handle.
2. Intensity: increase carefully your training intensity; avoid increasing volume and speed, while reducing recovery at the same time. Change one factor at a time.
Personally I like to increase the number of repetitions with the same recovery and a barely faster time.
For instance if you run 8x400m in 1’30” with 1’ recovery, you will be able to run 10 to 12x400m between 1’30 and 1’25” next time with the same recovery.
Also, the basic idea is that, if you increase the distance you reduce the speed and you increase the recovery.
For instance: 4x1km in 4’ with a 3’ recovery, then you move up to 4x1500 in 6’20”(4’13 a km) with a 4’ recovery
But if you increase the speed, you increase the recovery and reduce the number of repetitions. For instance: 8x200m in 40” with 1’ recovery becomes 6x200m in 35” with 1’30 recovery.
Those examples are written out of context, but if you apply them you won’t make any mistake in your training.
3. Planning your training: planning your training means that you are not running hard and all-out all the time. You need to careful plan hard/easy workouts, and even a recovery week every 3 to 4 weeks. It is a key to a good progression as your adaptations occur during recovery.
Of course recovering does not mean you are doing nothing but you just reduce your mileage and training intensity during that week to allow your body to adapt from the stresses from the previous cycle.
4. Strengthening: build a progressive strengthening program to allow your body to adapt.
Start with easy and shorts drills in repetitive circuit trainings, and move on to harder and stronger ones.
In my opinion, weightlifting should not be done before you built that core-strength stability your body needs.
5. Diversify your training: make sure to change you weekly routine so the training is fun and you enjoy it better.
Flexibility: work on your flexibility; it is your best insurance again the risk of injury.
Even though several studies show the low impact of static stretching before a workout, there are not really proofs that it is useless in your training.
In my experience, stretching improves your flexibility and is a good way after a warm-down to soften the stressed tissue. It enables your body to recover and jump to the next workout without the stiffness of the muscles.
Warm-up/warm-down: every time you are doing a workout, or simply racing you need to prepare your body to the effort required.
The warm-up should consist of a gradual increase in intensity and physical activity, raising the pulse, working on joints and muscles more and more specifically.
But you should carefully pick up your drills.
For instance, the American College of Sports Medicine recognized that pre-exercises stretching was not only detrimental to performance, but did not protect from injury. A very disturbing study for the big supporter of stretching I am.
But we have to be cautious with studies and protocols used in those ones.
Conversely, dynamic stretching improves performance when done during warm-up and decrease the risk of injury.
While warming-up is important, a good cool-down also plays a vital role in helping to prevent an injury. How? A good cool-down will prevent blood from pooling in your limbs. It will also prevent waste products, such as lactic acid, building up in your muscles. Not only that, a good cool-down will help your muscles and tendons to relax and loosen, stopping them from becoming stiff and tight.
This where light static muscle stretch is important.
Picking the right shoes: before buying the last fashionable jacket or T-shirt you better invest in a good pair of running shoes. Just think one minute how many steps are made during your numerous runs. All those poundings stressing out your muscles, ligaments and tendons.
Now what kind of shoes should you pick up?
First you need to know if you feet are pronating (inward roll of the foot), supinating (outward roll of the foot) or just flattening.
You will find an expert in most of the sport stores; feel free to ask and don’t be tempted by the nice flashy shoes that will go with your jacket.
Then you need to know what will be the main surface you will run on; trails, grass, pavement or a mix.
Each shoe is made for a specific surface; you just need to read the shoe specifications and pick the right one.
Finally you need to change your shoes every 400 to 500 miles; it might be a year for some, or 3 to 4 months for others. My advice is to buy two new pair of shoes at the same time and wear them alternatively.
Walk your new shoes for a week so they become more flexible and ready to roll.
Running on diverse surfaces: try to change the places and surfaces you run on; whatever it is pavement, grass, trails, track, dirt or sand.
There are so many things to say about preventing injuries; we could talk for days about your daily hygiene, recovery and/or rest periods, diet, mental state, dental hygiene (a study showed that 70% of tendonitis has a link to dental infections), and so on.
More to come
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