What are the aspects to consider when returning to running after an injury has occurred?
The rehab day:
One-two times a week a rehab day allows you to work on the cause of an injury or your underlying weaknesses that may involve strength, flexibility or balance. This allows your muscles and tendons to repair from running, and place appropriate loads on them in the gym.
Modify and overcome:
The idea of this is to find temporary strategies that allow you to continue running. These things include changing surfaces, shortening your stride length, or change running shoes. Use off-loading strategies such as taping and mobility exercises to improve your movement.
Cross-train:
Approach this area with caution. Just because you are not running, does not mean you can’t aggravate an injury. Swimming and cycling are two ways you can maintain cardiovascular fitness and reduce the load on some joints and muscles.
Setbacks:
It’s more common than you think, but around 50% of our patients have a set-back when returning from an injury. What often happens is the healing tissue is over-loaded too much too soon and as a result the collagen tissue that is new breaks down and causes inflammation and pain. This is known as microtrauma and only requires an adjustment in the load that you are performing.
Speed and hills:
Once you are pain-free with increasing distance in running, you can start to increase the speed. You should never increase the speed and distance at the same time. This way if pain begins then we know if it is the speed or the distance causing the increase in symptoms. Start with slow increments in speed, for example 1km at 5:00 pace and the rest of your run at 5:30. The next time you run continue with the 5:00 pace but for 2km’s and continue the rest at 5:30. When starting hills, the same rule applies in starting with a small distance of 100-200m. It’s important to note that running down hill is much harder due to the deceleration of the body.
See our expert Physiotherapy team at Frenchs Forest and Macquarie Park!