Injury Prevention Points

Last Wednesday night we held our first conference call on Injury Prevention and it really went well.  I will share a few highlights but before I do that, I want to remind you that there is a nice article on the Resources page on the website called The 10 Laws of Injury Prevention.  Here is the page on the website to find the article:  http://www.maxwellfitness.com/resources.shtml

I made 16 points on the conference call which I will list.  Please let me know if you have any questions about any of the items.

1.  Your running shoes are the most important piece of clothing on your body.  They last 300-500 miles, suggest change at least every 400 miles so you are being proactive.  Do not wear heels for extended periods of time if you can help it.  Be professionally fit for your shoes. 

2.  Work on your posture constantly, strengthen your core, hips, and glutes.  Need to be consistent to see a difference.  Run tall!

3.  Work constantly on flexibility/stretching, can be in the form of yoga.  A flexible body is a mobile body and body void of stress!

4.  Progress slowly as you build up mileage each week, do not increase your total weekly mileage by more than 10%.  Do not run faster than your comfortable pace if you are starting out.  If anything run slower.  This is hard with a group, you want to go with a particular group because you made some friends but if they are too fast for you, you need to drop back.  Listen to your gut, if you are going too fast, slow down.  Enjoy the experience!

5.  Warm up thoroughly, especially if you are a morning runner.  Take the first 5-10 minutes of every run and run/walk slowly to warm the body up.  I promise you will feel a lot better during the run if you take this time.

6. Build a solid base of pure conversational paced mileage for ideally 3 months before training for a significant race, 10K and up. 

7.  Plan on just 1 hill or speed workout per week, not one of each, just one, you can alternate weeks.

8.  Vary the terrain, try some trail running to give your joints a break once in awhile, do not always pick the same flat course as that will lead to an overuse injury, ideally you find rolling hill courses and more than one you like.

9.  Take at least 2 full days of rest if you are a beginner.  Experienced athletes should take at least 1 full day off.  We do not give rest and recovery enough respect.  Your body needs to time to build back stronger.  You are breaking your body down on your runs and it is during the rest days it builds back up.  Give it a chance to do that!

10.  Cross training is so good for runners.  Choose sports like swimming and cycling since they are non weight bearing and non pounding. 

11.  If you feel an uncomfortable pain or feeling crop up during a run, walk and get back home or to your car and take a few days off.  Ice and take it easy.  If you have to miss an important training run, you have to.  Be smart as a full blown injury can set you back months and you will miss many important runs!

12.  If you miss training runs while injured you can NOT just jump back in where you left off when you return from the injury.  You must work with a coach to slowly build back up.  You may need to miss that race you had already signed up for.  Again, it is being smart.    We need to always plan your training well in advance to make room for possible setbacks even illnesses.

13.  If you have a cold and it is above your chest, you can run easy for 20-30 minutes if you feel like it.  If it is below the neck and in the chest take the day off.  Take those days off when you have the flu.

14.  As we get into warmer temperatures we have to worry about heat injuries, specifically heat exhaustion.  You need to be smart and drink fluids, push them all day long before your runs and during your runs.  Wear light colored clothing, wear a hat, sunscreen, and run only when it feels tolerable.  Take it much slower in the humidity. 

15.  Vary your workouts, in an ideal training world you would run a different workout/run each day to keep your body guessing and to alternate what particular muscles are being stressed each day.  You can input different courses into your plan, some hill repeats, fartleks, tempo runs, etc.  Just try to stay away from 3 miles every other day.  That is not bad but I promise you will plateau and get frustrated.

That is my list for now.  I hope it helped a little.  I will take each one over time and discuss them further in newsletters.  Please ask more specific questions now though as you do not want to wait until you get the injury!!  Be proactive!

Happy Trails,

Kim