Running during the countries lockdown period has become something of a new hobby for many of you… and this really is fantastic! We must, however, ensure we are looking after our bodies during this increase in work on the body!
A key concept in preventing and managing running injuries is understanding the balance between training load and your capacity to handle that load. In a nutshell, it’s a case of working within your limits and not pushing your training beyond what your body can cope with. This will allow your fitness to steadily improve whilst maintaining good health in your muscles and joints. Overuse injuries are very common and something we see in clinic regularly. And given that these injuries are mostly directly related to tissue overload, managing your training load is paramount to remaining fit and able to train!
How do we manage load? The following have direct links to your training load-
How often you are running
How far you are running
How fast you are running
The terrain you are running on
How old your trainers are and are they fitted properly?
Previous injury
Sleeping/recovery habits
A lot of people are using lock down to increase their running. But upping your frequency of runs per week, length of run and speed of run all together can lead to some unhappy muscles/tendons/joints. It is important you increase all of these facets of running over time and in a controlled manor by progressing one of these facets at a time. For example, increase distance from 3km to 3.5km. Then increasing the speed at 3.5k over a few runs before then increasing to 4km. There are so many great apps to download onto your phones to track your frequency, distance, speed and elevation. Keep sensible with your tracking and injuries will stay away and you will make powerful strides to achieving your goals!
Keep an eye out next Monday 18th May for a recent project of ours… Harry’s Euro Having a Laugh on ITV 1 at 9pm!