Injury Recovery
Please follow this to help minimise the occurrence of injury and to correctly manage an injury if one does occur.
Most injuries fall within two distinct groups. An injury can occur either as a result of an acute “traumatic” episode, for example falling down a pothole in the pavement whilst training, or more commonly, as an “over-use” injury. It is impossible to predict all the traumatic episodes you can experience – we’ll leave that for you to find out and concentrate on the over-use injuries you can prevent.
An over-use injury occurs as a result of repetitive episodes of overload on a tissue, each episode causing trauma on a microscopic scale, and accumulating with each run to cause injury e.g. Achilles tendonitis.
An over-use injury can be further classified as ‘intrinsic’ or ‘extrinsic’. Intrinsic factors relate to the individual’s physical characteristics. An extrinsic injury is caused by an external force. In reality, running injuries are often a mixture of the two.
Examples of intrinsic factors which may lead to injury are:
· Muscle imbalance.
· Lack of flexibility (or, in some case over flexibility or joint laxity)
· Gain abnormalities and misalignment problems such as over-pronation and leg length difference.
· Body composition and size
These factors are not as important in the sedentary individual but can easily contribute to injury as running distances increase.
Examples of extrinsic factors include:
· Inappropriate/worn training equipment – in the case of running: old, worn trainers.
· Surfaces – too much road running, running the same way on a cambered road repeatedly.
· Training errors – the most common one being increasing mileage too quickly, also not allowing enough rest/recovery between runs.
· Environmental conditions – muscle/tendon injuries can occur in cold weather when there has been insufficient warm up; heat exhaustion and dehydration can also contribute to injuries.
It makes sense therefore that preventing running injuries involves identifying which of these factors is a problem and doing something about it, where at all possible.
When should I see a specialist?
It is difficult to say when an injury is more than just a short term pain or niggle and requires medical treatment. If an injury produces significant swelling or discolouration, creates prolonged tingling or numbness, creates an extended loss of function or recovers for daily living activities but continues to limit the ability to participate with your training, it is best to consult with a sports injury specialist. Everybody’s pain threshold and sports/running injuries knowledge is very different so, any problems you may experience please use common sense. If in any doubt please consult your local GP or qualified sports specialist sooner rather than later.
Courtesy of London Marathon