What Causes Running Injuries (And How to Fix Them)

Running injuries are the worst part of the sport, hands down. Just as someone is falling in love with the sport, something goes ping and they're back on the sofa. This blog looks at the causes of injury, as well as how to get back in the game.

There are two primary reasons someone will pick up and injury. a haphazard approach our training, and a lack. of strength.

Inappropriate Training

Many runners don't really think about training as such, they just go out and run. And you know what? That's fine, not everybody needs to be training for marathons or peak performance. 

However, if we are completely scattergun with our training, we vastly increase the risk of injury.

The first mistake runners make is increasing their volume too sharply. If you run twice a week, sign up for a marathon and are suddenly putting in six runs a week, this puts an enormous strain on the body, and vastly increase your chances of injury. 

The second mistake is too much intensity. If you join a run club that does speed work on Tuesdays, hills on Thursday and track on Saturday and decide to run all three sessions every week... you're probably getting injured, as well as burnt out. You probably want 2-3 easy runs for every hard session for long term development. 

The injures you are likely to pick up here are tendon injuries or stress fractures. 

Lack of Strength

The human body is a wonderful thing, incredibly adaptable and resilient. However, like anything it has its breaking point.

Many runners will develop knee pain at some point in their time, but the cause of the knee pain can be varied and confusing. While your well meaning aunt may tell you that you are destroying your knees and you need to stop running, the truth is often a lot more mundane.

As an example, I want to introduce you to a muscle known as the glue medius. This problem child is responsible for a good proportion of knee pain. It sits on the outside of your glutes (bum), and controls the movement of the knee as you run.

If your glute medius is weak, then your knee will drift towards the centre line of your body as you run, rather than staying in line with your feet. This cause a large tendon running down the outside of your thigh (your IT band) to get pulled tight. As the IT band runs from your hip to the outside of your knee, this will usually manifest itself as a burning pain on the outside of the knee. So your knee pain was actually caused by weakness in your glutes. 

By strengthening all muscles used in running, as well as the supporting muscles which help ensure that the prime movers can work efficiently, our chance of injury will plummet. However, there are thousands of exercises to choose from, it can feel very intimidating, and it's not easy to integrate with the rest of your training. Many runners will make excuses to skip strength work, simply because they don't understand it.

This is why I have created my Introduction to Strength Training for Runners programme. With a mixture of demonstration videos, theory modules and nine 12 week training plans to choose from, this programme will cause your risk of injury to plummet. Money spent on this course if money you don't need to pay a physio to fix you a few months down the line.

Learn more here: https://www.greyhound-fitness.com/strengthtrainingforrunners
Or here if you are a triathlete: https://phazontriathlon.mykajabi.com/introductiontostrengthfortriathlon

How to recover from injuries

By including strength training and following a high quality training plan we will go a long way to reducing our risk of injury. However, the very best athletes working with the very best physiotherapists still get injured, it's just part of sport I'm afraid.

Generally I use a three strike rule when it comes to injuries. If you experience pain or tightness on one run, it's not big deal. You could have slept funny, there might be a stone stuck in your shoe altering your gait, there's a long list of reasons you could have issues. Give that area a good stretch, foam roll and re-mobilisation when you get home. 

If you experience the same issue two runs in a row this should cause alarm bells to ring. You want to take time to really address the affected area. Pain in your heel? Calf stretch and foam roll. Pain in the bottom of your foot? Get a golf ball in there to release the tension. Make a note of when the pain started, and think if there is anything which could have changed in your running (shoes, duration, intensity e.t.c.)

If your experience the same issue three times in a row, then it's time to see a physiotherapist (or physical therapist in some parts of the world). You can go to them with a specific site of pain, how it feels and what the triggers might be. This gives them a lot more to work with than "I went on a run and my knee hurt.

After an examination the physio will give you a diagnosis (unless they need to refer you for scans), and likely some exercises to help correct the issue. 

I cannot emphasis this enough, you NEED to do these exercises.If you do not, you will not recover, and it could cause complications. Unless you are suffering with a stress fracture or a handful of other injuries, rest will do very little to help you recover. 

Hopefully you will be given a rough return to running plan to help you build back up to running, but there will come a point where you need to take control over your training again. Here's how to get back into the routine without a reoccurrence of the injury.

Increase volume gently

The worst thing you can do when recovering from an injury is to go back to what you were doing before. Start off with some run/walk workouts a few times a week, and build yourself back up over the course of a couple of months. Many runners experience "injury insanity" where they 

Stick with physio exercises

If a patient returns to a physio with a reoccurrence of the injury the first question the physio will ask will be "did you keep doing the exercises?". 99% of the time the answer will be no, which is the reason they're back in the clinic. Once you are on the road to recovery you may only need to do the exercises weekly instead of daily, but completely abandoning them will simply cause the old imbalances to reoccur. 

Be incredible careful with intensity

Nothing is going to derail your rehab quite like a hard track session. Yes these sessions feel great, but they place an enormous amount of strain on our body. By the time someone is able to run again, they probably need to wait 4-6 weeks before their return to high intensity running. 

This may feel like an eternity if you've only been running for six months, but it will help ensure you're still running in six years time. 

Keep mobile and flexible

If you don't include yoga and mobility in your training, this is a sign that you need to. As our body ages, especially if we have not been an athlete all our life, we will start to lose range of motion in our joints and our muscles will tighten up. By introducing this work into our routine, we can help ward off injury for years to come.

Conclusion

Here are the key take home points

• Don't increase volume or intensity dramatically. A 10% increase in volume week to week is a recognised standard that should help reduce injury.
• Include strength work. I know you didn't get into running to spend hours grinding away in the gym, which is why my programme only includes a s single workout a week lasting for 45 minutes. Pic up your copy now: https://www.greyhound-fitness.com/strengthtrainingforrunners
• Do. Your. Physio. Exercises 
• Be careful as you reintroduce volume, and especially careful when you reintroduce intensity.
• Keep up the physio exercises for the foreseeable future. You clearly have a weakness in that area which will reoccur without some preventative work.