What can you do to reduce your chance of injury from running?
Running injuries can affect many triathletes at some point in their triathlon career. In this blog Coach Jon takes a look at some things you can do to reduce your chance of injury from running.
Be Proactive
In a recent blog by Coach Alan - Prevention - the best cure for niggles and injuries - Alan discussed many ways you can help to reduce your chance of injury before you even set foot out of the door for your training session. Following on from Alan’s blog, this blog will look at the things you can do to reduce your chance of injury and improve your running performance without actually running. Being proactive and spending extra time working on: ‘Moving better’, strength work and recovering well will be more beneficial to your running than skipping these sessions and squeezing in an extra unstructured run.
‘Move Better’: Flexibility and mobility.
Very few runners commit to working on their flexibility (passive movement) and mobility (active movement). Each of us will have our tight spots, weak muscles, muscles that aren’t firing correctly or stiff joints. It is worth visiting an expert to assess your mobility and flexibility. They can then give you targeted exercises to lengthen, re-align or strengthen the areas you need to work on.
Many runners find they have a limited range of motion in their hips, which can cause problems. Jobs that involve a lot of sitting can be a cause of the tightness, not helped by all the hours spent in the time trial position on the bike for triathletes. Lacking proper hip extension brings inefficiencies to your running form as the tightness will reduce the propulsion and push off you can generate through your posterior chain. Hip tightness also poses an injury risk as reciprocal inhibition will prevent your glutes from firing properly, causing your pelvis to compensate and lower back to arch. Putting extra strain on other joints and muscles in the body as you run.
Spending some time working on flexibility with regular yoga sessions and a few minutes of daily passive stretching in the evening after your workouts will help to improve flexibility long term. Mobilising your tissues with regular sports massage or at-home foam rolling and massage gun time can help to loosen off any tight spots you've identified. Simple mobilisations in the morning or during pre-session warm-ups can go a long way to help the joints loosen off.
Don’t forget your feet.
Many athletes neglect their feet. Foot range of motion helps with balance and stability while running. Spending a few minutes activating the foot muscles by lifting and planting your toes individually or rolling your foot out on a golf or tennis ball can help your feet do their job properly and let your body know what’s going on when you touch the ground and how to adjust.
Stability
Being able to ‘move better’ is only half of the battle; being able to move with control and stability is key to running injury-free. Working your muscles dynamically helps build control and stability adding balance into the equation helps proprioception. Many athletes skip this step and head straight for the heavy weights. It is important first to teach the underactive muscles to fire properly. You may be able to do squats all day, but if the muscles aren’t firing correctly, the surrounding muscles will compensate for the misfiring muscle. This is inefficient and ultimately energy draining. To teach weak muscles to fire properly you have to isolate them. That’s what those seemingly tedious physio exercises do (such as clamshells, single-leg squats, and pelvic tilts), and it’s why they’re critical to your ability to prevent injury. Once you have the muscle firing correctly, it’s not about how many reps you can do; they have to be quality reps. Once you have good quality movement, with all muscles firing. You can move on to strengthening and integrating these new firing skills into your whole-body movements, such as squats and deadlifts.
Try adding some simple stability exercises such as single-leg deadlifts, single-leg squats and plyometric stability drills into your routine. If you can’t fit in a structured strength session, these work well as part of a pre-run warm-up to get the muscles activated before you head out.
Proper warm-ups
If we look back at Alan’s blog, he highlights the importance of warming up properly before sessions. ‘Mobilise, activate, romance’. Romance your body into the session, take the warm-up seriously and engage in the process. Following this approach is likely to lead to improved performance in the session and a reduced incidence of injury.
Proper cool downs
The same can be said for cooldowns - take them seriously - don’t just go from full throttle to zero. This can be dangerous. Bring your body back down gently and allow your physiological responses to return to baseline. Don’t rush it; just like the warm-up, spend some time re-mobilising and re-activating any problem areas. The cool down is the start of the recovery process, so the more you put it into it, the better prepared you will be for your next session. The cool down is a great time to start the recovery process in terms of nutrition, so use the time spent cooling down to re-hydrate and take on a recovery drink or snack.
Recovery
Resting and recovering between sessions is essential to remain injury-free. Taking a day off from training or scheduling some easier sessions to allow your body the time it needs to repair and recover from the previous sessions makes you stronger, more robust and ready to go again for the next session. If you go against this advice and don’t allow your body to rest, you may end up going into sessions with muscles that are already fatigued before you start, and that will not help them resist injury. To recover well, you need to make sure you are fueling the body with a well-balanced, well thought out nutrition plan so that you arrive at each session fully fueled. To give the body the best chance of recovering well, you also need to make sure you give it adequate good quality sleep.
Run well
Until now, we haven't even mentioned running yet - along with all the preventative measures, making sensible decisions with your run training can help stave off running injuries.
Include running drills in your weekly schedule to ensure you transfer the good work you have done on ‘moving well’ into your running. Drills can be easily incorporated into running warm-ups or brought in with some ‘running strides’ where you really dial in your running form. Take a look at your cadence - is it fading during your long runs? If it is, that could be a sign that your form is degrading as you tire.
Train smart
Many injuries come about from athletes getting carried away and jumping ahead with their mileage or intensity. Your body is great at adapting to the stresses of running if those stresses are manageable. Things tend to go wrong when the body cannot cope with dramatic changes in mileage and/or intensity. The goal of training is to obtain the greatest benefit while incurring the least amount of stress. That means making yourself as efficient as you can while still meeting the purpose of the workout and obtaining the desired result. Using a training plan or having a coach tailor sessions for you is the best way to make sure you are realistic with the training demands you are placing on your body.
Listen to your body
Be sensible through every session. If you feel something doesn't feel quite right, then address it there and then. If your calf feels a bit too tight, then cut the run session by half or spend the time on some mobilisation, drills and try and self-massage your calf. In other words – listen to your body.
All of the above advice will help make a huge step towards side-stepping niggles before they materialise into injuries. However, if you do end up letting one develop into an injury, you should not be negotiating with your body – see the physio as soon as possible. Listen to their advice and do their exercises. It is the quickest way back and the least impact on your training. A few sessions missed but spent rectifying a slight imbalance is by no means the end of the world and will yield a better result than ignoring it, picking up a serious injury and not being able to do anything at all for several weeks.
Jon has been coaching with his local triathlon club in Hertfordshire around his full-time job as an airline pilot for several years. Unfortunately, Jon lost his pilot’s licence for 11 months in 2019 due to being diagnosed with testicular cancer (read his story here). He used the time off from flying to complete his Level 2 and Level 2 BTF diploma qualifications as well as a L3 Personal Trainer qualification. With his new coaching qualifications under his belt, Jon was able to join Tri Training Harder as a coach in 2019. He has now recovered from cancer, started flying again and is training hard for the coming triathlon season.
Jon has a flexible approach to coaching and training, from his own busy lifestyle he knows how to balance training around family, friends and social commitments. Jon loves to utilise the knowledge gained on his Personal Trainer course and finds incorporating well-structured strength and conditioning sessions vital to triathlon performance.
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