Running Injury Prevention
Let’s look at a few ways you can help prevent running injuries. I’m writing this predominantly for the less experienced or beginner runner so they don’t make some of the mistakes most of us have.
Address previous injuries: Injuries from 5, 10 and 15+ yrs ago, it doesn't matter. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had people attend physio with one sided low back pain and when assessing them they have reduced function anywhere below their lower back and it correlates with a bad and/or poorly rehabilitated injury on that same or opposite side to the lower back pain.
Prepare to train: Prepare your body to cope with the stress you will be placing on it. Let’s imagine you have just made it into the London marathon for April 27th 2019 but have no running experience or have been off running for a while. You’re not going to just jump straight into 15 mile long runs or high volume intensity interval running, you're going to progress your training in levels if you will. But each level is preparing you to train for the next. This doesn’t mean you can’t pretty much do all aspects of your running training requirements, it just means you might have a bias to certain components in each running training phase. If you’ve never run before, are below average fitness and need to shed some pounds, your training may initially start pogressing walking distance & speed, low intensity cycling and low intensity bodyweight strengthening. After a few weeks you may begin a walk-jog programme, cycle further distances, increase the volume or intensity of bodyweight exercise and so on. In running we have base phases, I would class the previous as a pre base phase. You also have a race related phase post the base phase, then a race specific phase, then a tapering phase and even post your race a recovery phase.
Recover well: Where do I start? Training to become a fitter runner we repeatedly put stress and strain on our body and this is known as the training stimulus. This stress and strain causes tissue breakdown and in order to benefit from the breakdown we need it to repair and hence we go through breakdown and repair. If we don’t recover well we don’t repair well and therefore don’t adapt well to activities. Adaptation will allow us to progressively stress on our body, for example in improving our anaerobic capacity over 3 weeks we may do Wk1 4x200’s, Wk2 6x200’s; week 3 8x200’s etc.
There are 100’s of ways to recover, some evidence based and some not evidence based. In my experience though, what works best for you usually works best regardless of the science (the mind is the most powerful thing we have, do not underestimate its effect on our physical recovery). Ways to recover well and are not limited to: sleeping more, eating well, Icing, compression, meditation, tissue release, joint mobility, supplements, breathing exercises, rehydrating well, low level cardiovascular activity etc. Find what works for you.
Improve your running technique: Improve your running form for 3 important reasons: preventing running injury; improving running economy; and increasing running satisfaction.
I purposely missed out discussing the training plan itself to prevent injury. Keep an eye out for it in another blog!
This is just a start and will prove invaluable if you ensure the above. As you learn more about your running and endurance training you will discover so many more ways to prevent injury.
