Injuries do plague us from time to time and it do interfere with our training.
I consider injuries to fall into one of 5 categories:
Environmental injuries: Injuries related to running surfaces and conditions e.g. camber of the road, downhill running, and trail running. This cause uneven running on your body alignment and can cause injury.
Shoes: Injuries caused by wearing the incorrect shoes. You get different shoes. Neutral shoes for your neutral runner and stability shoes for your runner that pronates severly
Stupidity as a runner: Over doing it on a run when there is no need to!
Incorrect body posture with week gluteus muscles and hip flexors:
Bad luck: A totally unrelated injury i.e. slipping on a floor, stepping into a pot hole for example.
Some basic injury advice:
- You can’t run an injury away! They don’t just get better.
- Have niggles seen to when they are just that, niggles
- When do I apply HEAT and when do I apply ICE? The simple rule of thumb is this. Apply heat before (that is, literally warming up the muscle before use) and ICE after exercise.
- When dealing with an injury, remember the RICE
R = Rest
I = Ice
C = Compression
E = Elevation - To prevent injury, warm up or stretch before training.