Fed up of getting injured?
Getting injured as a runner is incredibly common, with an estimated 50% or more of runners nursing an injury every year! So what can we do to help reduce the risk of us falling into that unlucky 50%?
Firstly, it is important to know that there are many factors which feed into our risk of injury, from what we eat to the amount of training we are doing. To stand the best chance of remaining injury free we need to make sure we are looking at all the risk factors and managing them the best we can.
Strength training outside of running is often said to "prevent injuries". Whilst I can't emphasis enough the importance keeping strong and doing strength work outside of running, it's a fantastic way to improve your running and performance, and it can certainly help to reduce your risk of injury!
However, strength alone will not prevent you from getting injured as a runner. If it did surely all elite athletes would be injury free as they certainly know and understand the benefits of strength training.
One of the best ways to lower your risk of injury is to make sure that you are managing your stress levels. By stress I mean both physical AND mental stress. That's right, a high level of mental stress can increase your chances of getting an injury from running!
So thinking of ways to reduce your mental stress, whether through meditation, spending time with family and friends, doing mindful exercises like Pilates and Yoga, is a great way to reduce your risk of injury.
When it comes to physical stress, we want to make sure that we are creating just the right amount of physical stress in training so that the body is prompted to create positive adaptations to our fitness, whilst not pushing into an overload of physical stress that is likely to increase our chances of injury. We also need to make sure we are eating well, staying hydrated and resting sufficiently to support the body in making those positive adaptations. Again, if we don't support the body with sufficient fuel and rest then we will put the body under too much physical stress, thereby increasing the chances of injury.
That is why you may have heard of the 10% rule in training. Making sure that you increase your running by only 10% per week (whether that is speed work, distance, intensity/number of runs). That incremental increase will help to keep you under the right amount of physical stress to improve your fitness, without tipping you over into training overload. It is also a good idea to think about your cross training and making sure that you get some variety in your movement outside of running. Running is high impact and a very repetitive movement pattern. By adding in some variety to your movement outside of running, you can continue to build strength for your running, whilst giving the body a rest from such a repetitive movement. That is one of the many reasons Pilates is so great for runners, it is low impact and offers a high level of movement variety.
In summary, if we want to avoid an injury as runners then we need to look at the bigger picture of our lives. Making sure we eat well, keep hydrated, have quality sleep, vary our movement and take sufficient rest from training to support our bodies.
Happy running Pilates People!
