prevent injuries Archives - Jürg Widmer Probst

Are you a keen runner? Do you find that you keep getting injured? If so, you’re not alone. It’s a common issue among runners – that, for whatever reason, the injuries just start piling up. However, it doesn’t have to be like this. To help you out, we’ve pulled together our top tips on how to prevent running injuries.

Wondering how to prevent running injuries? Begin with warming up and cooling down properly

This is the big one. How many of us actually warm up and cool down properly? Not many, we’d guess. And yet it is absolutely fundamental to staying injury-free.

Forcing your muscles to go from sitting on a sofa to running even just 5k is a big step if you haven’t prepared them. Warming up gets the blood circulating, it stretches the muscle fibres and it also gets you mentally in the zone. Cooling down is equally important, transitioning you from intense activity to rest.

Find a warm up that suits you – dynamic lunges are great for stretching out your hips and your hamstrings. But we’d also just recommend a five-minute walk. It’s as good a way as any to prepare for a run.

Don’t just focus on your legs

Imagine you’re training for a marathon. You’re putting in the miles and have even got up to a half marathon distance. You felt tired, but good – this is something you feel you can do, at a push.

There’s only one problem – you’re getting a nagging pain on the outside of your knee. You try to shake it off, but then, once marathon day comes around, you’re forced to pull out around half way.

The chances are, if it’s an injury like an IT band strain, that it’s not actually your legs that are too blame. Sure – you’ve been getting plenty of miles under your belt. But the fact is that an underlying mechanical problem – perhaps weak glutes or calves– is affecting your running form.

Once you get to runs over half marathon distance, that kind of weakness can really have an impact. You might feel fit enough to run the whole way. But if your legs aren’t working in the most efficient way because your body isn’t supporting their motion correctly, something is going to give. Remember running is a whole body exercise – so don’t neglect those crunches, hip flexes and core exercises too.

Sort your running form out

There are lots of factors that go into developing the right running form. One of the most important is the point we’ve made above. It’s crucial to make sure you’re strong enough to support your body through the repeated impact of running.

It also comes down to footwear too, of course. It’s one of the most hotly-debated topics in running. Whether you’re a minimalist or maximalist when it comes to shoes, our advice is not to follow the crowd.

Go to a proper athletics shop and get them to look at your running form. Hit the treadmill and get them to do a gait analysis. It should go a long way toward you getting shoes that help you to run efficiently and in a way that isn’t damaging you.

Learn to rest

We all love to run. So much, that it can become an addiction for some. This is particularly the case for new runners. You’re bitten by the bug and you just want to get out on the trails or the road as often as you can.

The problems arise when you forget to listen to your body (or your training plan). In our enthusiasm to run, it can be easy to think ‘I’ll just go for a short jog today’ when in actual fact we should be resting. It’s important even when we’re not feeling a niggling injury.

Rest days are as important as training days, because this is the time when you consolidate the progress you’ve made. Every run causes micro-tears in your muscles, and rest days are your body’s opportunity to rebuild them.

The theory is that they rebuild them stronger (increasing our strength), but if we don’t rest they don’t have a chance to do this.

So, don’t ignore that big red ‘R’ in your training plan calendar. It’s there for a reason.

The art of warming up and down

Age teaches many valuable lessons. But one of the most important for athletes is how the increasing vulnerability of our bodies underlines just how important it is to warm up and cool down when we exercise.

Don’t get us wrong – it is important to warm up and cool down at any age, and regardless of your fitness levels. You’ll never see a 20 year old sprinter just wandering out of the changing rooms at the Olympics and straight into a race. Whatever our age, we need to prepare properly for what we are about to do. The issue as we get older is that we have less and less margin for error – the things we can get away with when we’re 25 just don’t work when we’re 45.

So, the bottom line is that warming up and down is important – but what might not be quite so clear is exactly why we need to do it. The basic principles are these.

A double benefit

By warming up before we exercise, we’re doing a couple of things. The first is that we’re getting our heart pumping just a little faster. That’s preparing it for the activity to come, but it is also starting the process of getting more blood pumping around your body. As your circulation increases in around your joints and muscles, you become more flexible and your muscles are getting ready to move once you start exercising.

But when we warm up, we often also stretch our muscles – which also gets them in the right shape for the activity we’re about to do.

There’s another benefit to warming up properly too – and that’s on the mental side of things. When we take the time to warm up we’re also giving ourselves the space to transition into the activity, not just physically but also in terms of our focus. Anyone who has done any sport at all will understand just how important the mental side of it is, and warming up plays a key role in this.

Time to cool down

But what about cooling down?

Often, when we’re tired, it is the last thing we want to do. Most of us just want to grab a quick shower and get some food inside us – but warming down is just as important as warming up. Obviously, most of the benefits are simply the reverse of warming up – it returns our heartbeat to something like normal, and gives our muscles a chance to relax back into shape. But it’s also a chance for our muscles to get rid of some of the lactic acid that builds up when we exercise hard.

Again, warming down also serves as an important opportunity to bring our minds back into every day life. We can reflect on how we performed while we were exercising, and begin to reconnect with the world around us.

We’re often asked about what pre- and post exercise routines we recommend, and the one we always suggest is one of the very simplest. Our advice is simply to walk a little before you run, or on your way to working out at the gym. Walking is a great way to gently begin to raise your heart beat and warm up your muscles.

And of course, if you’re feeling really good (and you think no one is watching) you can always throw in a few dynamic lunges as you walk, just for good measure.

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