Are you one of the many that have picked up running at some time this year, or have decided to start training for the bucket list marathon or half marathon? These tips may come in handy to help to prevent injuries.
1. Avoid Training Errors
There are plenty of training errors but most of them come down to not setting yourself enough time to reach your goal. Whether that be a marathon coming up, a personal goal of a particular distance, or a personal best, you need to give yourself enough time to reach the goal safely and efficiently.
Doing too much too soon is a good way to increase your risk of an overuse injury. Particularly if you are new to running, or coming off a break from running.
This is followed by increasing your running distance too quickly. Some research suggests that those that increased their overall running volume by 10% each week there was a <10% injury risk. Those that increased volume >15% each week, injury risk increased to between 21%-49%.
Take a slow and steady approach to your running journey!
2. Don’t overemphasise the importance of stretching
Runners tend to over emphasise stretching as important for injury prevention. Although there is a time and place for stretching, research has shown no beneficial effect of stretching for injury prevention.
The problem with over emphasising its importance is that it is time that could be spent doing strength training which has proven benefits of injury prevention and optimising performance.
Research has actually reported that static stretching (holding a stretch for a period of time) has a negative effect on performance by decreasing muscle peak power.
For those who like to add some stretching into their routine, try adding in some dynamic stretches to warm up rather than static holds.
3. Don’t ignore strength training
There are plenty of benefits that come with strength training, particularly in runners. This includes, but is not limited to, improved running efficiency, reduced injury risk and improved maximal speed and performance.
Strength training is used to improve the body’s capacity to endure higher training loads. It allows us to perform better, and for longer periods of time before the body gets overloaded. Rather than keeping training loads low to match the body’s capacity, we can increase the body’s capacity with strength training.
Research has suggested that strength training reduced sports injuries to less than 1/3, and reduced overuse injuries by almost a half.
Targeting the lower limb and trunk muscles with heavy, resistance training, as well as targeting muscular endurance with higher repetitions can be very useful. Utilising single leg exercises is also beneficial to make sure a weaker side isn’t hiding behind the strength of the other leg.
