5 Running Mistakes to Avoid
Expert Physiotherapy for Running Injuries
In order to help maximise your running goals, here’s Keilor Road Physiotherapy’s top 5 pitfalls to avoid when it comes to your running training.
1) Not being patient with load progression
The work of Sports Scientist Tim Gabbett [1] studied the relationship between changes in weekly training load (reported as a percentage of the previous weeks’ training load) and the likelihood of injury.
They reported the following:
• When training load was fairly constant (ranging from 5% less to 10% more than the previous week) athletes had <10% risk of injury
• However when training load was increased by ≥15% above the previous week’s load, injury risk escalated to between 21% and 49%.
Gabbett et al. surmised that in order to minimise the risk of injury, athlete’s should limit weekly training load increases to <10%. Allow yourself enough time to achieve your goals.
Strength training is an important part of becoming an efficient runner.
2) Ignoring strength training as part your routine
Benefits of strength training for runners are known to include: improved running economy, reduced injury risk, improved time to exhaustion at maximal aerobic speed, and improvements in time trial performance and anaerobic parameters such as maximal sprint speed.
Perhaps the most comprehensive study of all things strength training for runners comes from a recent 2017 systematic review [2]. The research reviewed suggests that supplementing the training of a distance runner with strength training is likely to provide improvements to running efficiency, time trial performance and anaerobic parameters such as maximal sprint speed.
3) Running too fast during training
Author of ’80/20 Running: Run Stronger & Race Faster by Training Slower’, Matt Fitzgerald outlines that recent studies of the training practices of the world’s leading runners reveal that they spend on average 80% of their total training below the ventilatory threshold. The ventilatory threshold pace is slow enough that a runner can hold a conversation. In well trained runners the ventilatory threshold falls between 77 and 79% of maximum heart rate. In other words, for every one hard run, the elite distance runner will run four easy runs. By contrast the recreational runner tends to run one easy run for every hard run. The other 20% of training time is spent at high intensity, that is above the respiratory compensation threshold (the point where hyperventilation, or rapid, deep breathing occurs).
Ventilatory threshold is a useful guide to running intensity.
4) Ignoring bone health
Bones are living tissue that need care and attention e.g. vitamin D and the RDI of calcium. Despite common belief and sentiment amongst runners, running does not actually enhance bone health-it simply maintains it. That is if you run across your lifespan you have a better chance of ‘slowing the normal age related decline’ of bone mineral density (particularly in the weight bearing bones such as the pelvis/hips).
What can help bone health is: heavy lifting (eg twice per week- think squats and deadlifts), paying attention to daily calcium intake, and avoiding sudden and unexpected loads to the bones (think jumping off steps and landing awkwardly with force).
5) Too much emphasis on stretching & foam rolling
The biggest problem with too much focus being given to stretching for endurance runners is that time spent stretching could have been better spent working on strength and conditioning exercises-which have been shown to be very beneficial in the reduction of injury and optimisation of running performance.
A better approach in many instances would be to replace the stretching with some form of strength and conditioning. A systematic review on the effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries found that strength training reduced sports injuries to less than one-third and overuse injuries could be almost halved [3].
Keilor Road Physiotherapy are the experts at maximising your running goals. Servicing Niddrie, Essendon, Airport West, Keilor & Melbourne’s Northern suburbs for over 40 years, you can book with one of our expertly trained running injury team below or call 93794557 to speak to one of our admin superstars.
Related links
References
[1] Gabbett TJ. The training—injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder? Br J Sports Med 2016;50:273-280.
[2] Blagrove, R.C., Howatson, G. & Hayes, P.R. (2017). Effects of Strength Training on the Physiological Determinants of Middle- and Long-Distance Running Performance: A Systematic Review. Sports Med.
[3] Lauersen, J. B., Bertelsen, D. M., & Andersen, L. B. (2014). The effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Br J Sports Med, 48(11), 871-877.
Article by
Robbie Webb | Sports Physiotherapist
Robbie graduated from The University of Melbourne in 2004 and completed his Masters in Sports Physiotherapy via La Trobe University in 2012. He has extensive private practise experience and was head Physiotherapist at the Hamilton Football and Netball Club for six years.