Transcript
0:00 Runners get injured it sucks what can we do about it that's what we're going to cover in today's video so let's jump into it I'm going to sum up this whole video in one phrase don't do stupid things now it's more than that but if we look at the data one study by Jacobs at all found that 60% of running injuries were due to training errors meaning too much too soon volume too much intensity not enough recovery or any Myriad of
0:33 factors in between and I think that's where we start before we talk about nutrition recovery sleep the shoes you wear cross training warm-ups cooldowns we'll cover it all but I want to start with the training errors and this is really hard because we've tried to quantify it in so many ways so looking at volume of training trying to classify intensity of training trying to create a measure that combines both that looks at
1:03 what you're used to versus how variable that is in weeks or days or months in all sorts of ways to classify trading load getting at the Holy Grail of predicting injuries and guess what none of it helps a ton why because injuries are really freaking hard to predict I've talked to people who work in professional football and soccer and the NBA a who try to do this for a living with enormous budgets
1:34 and resources and data and even they cannot find the Holy Grail why the human body is complex can't predict it now that doesn't mean we have despare what that means is we try to use rules of thumb that'll allow us to minimize that risk so when you hear things like the 10% volume increase from week to week that's a rule of thumb that says hey basically don't increase your volume too much now I'm not a huge fan of
2:03 percentage because when you're used to running 100 miles a week that's different than when you're used to running 20 miles a week and the percentages don't help very much but here's what I like to say is don't go somewhere new unless it's gradually so if you've been somewhere consistently you can feel hey I've got a pretty good shot of this so if you've consistently been doing 50 miles a week for a long time and you drop down for a week or two for
2:32 whatever reason you can get back up to 50 without too much risks you've been there for a while it's not risk-free but without too much risk once you start going into the unknown or the places where you haven't been there before you need to be super cautious and very gradual right only add a little bit of time and this doesn't just apply to volume it's overall training load so volume we talk a lot about because it's
3:00 easy to quantify how many miles per week did you run how long was this long run but it's the intensity that also matters why because they both add different stressors right volume adds accumulated stressors of load so it's like this Cy cylic repetitive like stressor on bone ten tendon Etc intensity often puts on another stressor right it's when you start to run fast or Sprint or do hard intervals your recruiting different
3:30 fibers in a different way in a shorter period of time it's why we get hamstring strains when we we Sprint because the Ecentric load is higher now and the breaking forces because you're again eccentrically loading the hamstring and others same with the killes okay so it all matters here but the basic underlying principle is don't go there until you need to go there go very gradually when you're doing something new or that you haven't done it in a
3:56 while give yourself time to adapt I like to say once I've been somewhere wait until I've adjusted till I've done that long run distance maybe a couple times or that 20000s or speed workouts two or three weeks before I say okay it's time to press this further give yourself time to adapt okay gradual it's the old phrase that Brad stalberg and I came up with stress plus rest equals growth we've got to balance the equation applies to physical applies to
4:26 everything so training loads don't do stupid things this why you have a coach okay that's number one number two is the reason that we don't have good research and we're going to go into this because there's been all sorts of reviews and meta analysis and basically they all come out and say like it's really hard to do really good quality research and all we see is small effects on most things and we just don't know the reason
4:53 is because when we lump all these injuries into one they all have different ing factors right stress fractures often a repetitive load injury Achilles tendon repetitive load but in a different way hamstring pulls okay sudden sometimes due to fatigue right when we go in fatigued and try and run fast more likely to have hamstring pulls okay we look at it band or knee problems like the loading is different on each there's no one magic cure so what I'm going to
5:23 say here is we have to rely on a little bit of science but we also have to rely on you need to know your weak link and then observe and understand what triggers it what are the things that aggravate it what are the things that help it this is where you have to be in of one or if you're lucky and you're coached by someone they get to pull an experience and say hey I've seen these
5:47 patterns before these things helped these things got in the way and that's where we're at again I wish I had better news but that's where we're at so okay let's step back what are some things that we can actually do that might help minimize or prevent injuries besides adjust the training one is implementing some sort of cross training can take the load off right why is running so injury-prone because we have to do with the actual
6:16 pounding it's why swimmers cyclist and skiers can all train at a higher volume in terms of total hours than Runners even at the elite level skiers cyclists Etc put Maybe almost 40% more total time in terms of volume than Runners do because we're limited by the pounding the stress of having three to four times your body weight impact every single stride depending on speed and pace and that stuff okay one of the ways we can
6:47 do that is ADD supplementing in terms of cross training now there is a small risk to this because you're using muscles in different ways and for instance cycling you're shortening the quad and sometimes that can cause some pain at the tendon if you just jump into it right away but the same principle applies even though there's no training gradually increase your cross training as a supplementary approach especially if you know your weak Link in the chain is accumulated
7:15 volume in a certain way give yourself time to still get the training in or get some of the adaptations without the same or similar load so you're essentially taking the load off okay so we can mess with the stress part in that manner now the rest or recovery part we can mess with in a couple a is having down weeks or as I like to call them not necessarily planned down weeks but weeks where I'm responsive to what I'm seeing
7:46 in the training so sometimes coaches say hey every four weeks we're going to drop the volume or drop the intensity and give you time to recover I like to say hey about every area four to five weeks we're going to need one of these but I'm going to be responsive to meaning I'm going to implement it sometimes it's after 3 weeks of hard training sometimes two sometimes four sometimes 5 I'm going to implement this when I see that hey
8:09 we're messing up that balance a little of stress and rest we need to increase our our bandwidth of recovery so that we can bounce back now the key here is you don't take a down week you don't take a week off because your body almost freaks out and says hey what's happening here what we do is we increase or decrease the load and IND or intensity enough where it allows space to recover but we're not detraining and our body's and
8:36 brain aren't forgetting what we're supposed to do okay or what it feels like this is often why in tapers if you drop the mileage or intensity too much you start feeling sluggish because your body essentially goes hey I've been running 80 miles a week we're doing you know 30 to 40 or whatever it is like it's time to check out take the time off you start feeling worse other things that help when we look at recovery so
9:01 nutrition number one of this is make sure you're not under fueling fuel enough why calories are King they provide the fuel not only to propel US during the activity but also recover afterwards so carbs proteins fats you need them all varying degrees go talk to a nutritionist but we need to make sure we're fueled if we are under fueled our body body is going to under repair couple other things from nutrition is sometimes when we're in whole there's
9:29 some research that shows that we can boost muscle protein synthesis keep it elevated so that our muscles can repair and recover as we hit them with some damage during hard workouts or long runs by having a larger dose of protein before bed why before bed because that's when a lot of this repair cycle occurs it's also as we'll talk about when our growth hormones and testosterone Peak out and including hits of protein throughout the day to keep that muscle
9:58 of protein synthesis elevated again it's not a ton but make sure you're having some protein breakfast lunch dinner and maybe a snack or two so you keep that protein there so muscle can repair recover let's go to sleep this is probably one of the most important things if you look at the data there is some data that shows that once you get chronically sleep deprived you have a higher rate of injury risk and this doesn't just apply to running but
10:24 applies to most sports why because sleep is when repair recovery and all the hormones testosterone human growth hormone are all released to help us bounce back if we cut that sleep short especially deep sleep we don't get as high of a boost of those hormones we don't get that muscle protein synthesis elevated so that we're repairing and recovering overnight so sleep do your best look I'm a father of two under two I get it sometimes you can't sleep but
10:56 you do your best because that matters a lot for for Recovery okay what else matters let's look at a couple other things there things that you can do in your training in addition to modifying volume and intensity things like warming up and cooling down now I want to be clear on this warming up has some data on preventing some types of injury okay depends on the type right a lot of good data on muscle pools and strains some
11:22 data on other injuries some not so much but here's the deal think of it like this whenever we're going to run hard we need to make sure we have a thorough warmup what does that mean easy running to get blood flow easy muscle recruitment going then some sort of dynamic stretching or dynamic drills plus some faster strides to get us prepared we're essentially crescendoing up to the workout if we do that well we've primed our muscle physiologically
11:52 blood flow heart pumping muscle temp elevated and neurologically recruiting some fast twitched fibers getting them prepared do that well before we run hard do you need a warm up before easy runs not necessarily I'll say this when you're younger no you use the first couple miles to ease into it it's just the truth as you age sometimes you need longer to prepare even for those easy runs so going through some sort of routine like some Dynamic stretching or
12:23 some Dynamic lunges or some easy jogging before we get into it can be helpful it can also be helpful when we're younger okay but do we necessarily need to go through a long warm-up when we're going through for easy runs no we don't okay but as we age especially absolutely I like the the Kenyan approach here which is essentially start really freaking slow and then you let your body ease into it so instead of starting out the
12:51 gate at six minute or 7 Minute miles maybe that first mile mile is 9 minutes and you ease into it it's the Kenyon shop okay use that cool Downs there's not as much data surprisingly that cool Downs help prevent injuries or even help recovery but here's where I think the practice is more important than the data and the research because it's hard to study I think what we know is that cooldowns tend to make us feel better
13:21 the appearance the perception of feeling better both after the workout and later and it probably has a slight training effect because we're cooling down we still got all all especially after I should say cool Downs after workouts do you need to cool down after a long run no okay or easer run probably not okay but after hard workouts or races what it does is it gives us a little bit more time in a depleted State and we get this
13:47 nice blood flow we get a little bit of more training we almost bring that Crescendo down we deal with some of the stress hormones that have been going up and help to use exercise to alleviate them so I think the cool down whether it helps from an injury standpoint that depends probably but I think it it really matters when we look at overall effect okay so cooling down after workouts let's dive into shoes oh the tricky tricky part of shoes all right
14:19 here's the deal you would think shoes play a big deal and they probably do on the individual level but if we look systematically at systematic reviews and met analysis the data is basically all over the place all over the place right there's been studies that show that figuring out shoes based on Arch height no difference in injury based on pration level no difference in injury now the data is really hard to accumulate and there's some signal amongst the noise
14:48 there but it's really hard to pick out but if we were to summarize the data and some of the latest theories it essentially says this your best shoe is probably the one that feels most comfortable now that sounds really strange but some of the top shoe researchers have put forward this theory that is called the preferred movement path which means the shoe might help a little bit but like biomechanically we have this preferred movement path and
15:14 either our shoe helps support that or it gets in the way and we're going to figure out how to stay on that preferred movement path no matter what so despite the data even if we got in super cushion shoes like the data just isn't there to say oh super cushion shoe is going to help us a ton because what happens is our brain and our muscles and our tendons like our neural network like adjust so if we're in super cushion
15:43 shoes our brain goes like Oh okay we don't need to activate the calf complex in this way because this is taking some of the load so we're going to do this but instead we need to stabilize in this way so what happens is like you would just the natural cushioning mechanisms of your body or the muscle tension of your your how you're absorbing that force and it doesn't sometimes it doesn't change the actual load transmitting as much as we'd think okay
16:13 but the good news is this although there's not a a lot of research there was a 2015 study that showed that if we rotated multiple pairs of St shoes it did reduce injury risk why who knows there's some theories out there you rotate you alter that movement path which you're adjusted to and give you some more robustness instead of doing the same thing but no one really knows exactly why but it helps at least
16:43 according to one study and I'd say it's a long tradition in Runners so I'd go for it rotate through a couple different pairs of shoes if you have the financial ability to do so for your easy runs and that way you might reduce SK injury risk a little bit all right let's go into strength training and and what i' call prehab exercises so the data again on strength training is all over the place why CU it's really hard to figure out
17:09 but here's what I think we know and here I'm going to refer to a recent 2024 meta analysis that looked at not just strength training but exercise-based prevention programs basically think of it as like your PT assigning specific exercises to help holistically overall it show that like these exercises didn't have a significant effect on injuries but if you dug into the data they found that supervised intervention showed promise and I'm quoting them when you
17:40 only examined the supervised exercise program there was a significant reduction in injury risk compared to the control so when you do exercises right maybe have some help they tend to work think often when we do these things especially the prehab or rehab stuff that we look at is sometimes we're not doing it in the way that may help us best so what's the lesson here is I think some of the stuff works but get some guidance right don't just trust Joe
18:10 on YouTube get some guidance from a PT physical therapist someone who knows running well can help you kind of navigate for your specific problems and injuries or risk factors what might be some good things here now in terms of strength training again even with the data all over the place I would say it's highly beneficial to include some strength training in there why it just creates this a more robust you okay if we're going to again what you need to do
18:40 specific to your body and your kind of weak links in the chain but what I like to suggest is twice a week at at least you're doing some sort of whole body movements it can be weighted it can be not depends on your level again add some sort of weight most likely but how heavy depends on the goals but for most of us Runners is just getting started so some sort of whole body movement we're looking at at lunges squats in different
19:10 direction Vern gambetta has a lot of really good stuff in his books and resources we're looking at kettle bell swings getups carries my good friend Dan John said that the ideal running strength training program was whatever allowed us to be tall well tired and I think there's some truth to that because what happens when we look at injuries is when do those most likely show up when we start breaking down when fatigue causes us to alter our mechanics in a
19:42 way that we can't withand the forces and that gets me to the last thing running form once again the data is all over the place that's the theme of this one I'm just going to be honest with you but again that's because we have to look at things holistically when we look at individually there are some modifications for running form individually that will help with specific injuries so it depends on what you're looking at right and I'm going to
20:11 caution you here again every time we alter the running form we alter how our body is absorbing and carrying that load so for instance if we say I heard heel striking is bad for this and we switch to midfoot strike or four-foot strike guess what we might have switched an alleviated maybe our our shins right from taking up the muscle the force there and and absorbing it but we've put more pressure and stress on our cailles
20:40 complex and if our cailles complex haven't been trained to handle that load we're probably screwed so when we look at running form changes here's what I like to think of a work with a coach I'm going to give more information on how to change your running form but I recently did a video on running form and what to look for and then depending on how you're changing your form make sure you're training those movements and the potential weak
21:07 links in the chain to be robust enough to absorb whatever the change is so if you're changing to more midfoot or underneath or closer to underneath your knee in terms of hitting the ground then you need to do more Achilles and calf strengthening and exercises that means calf raises that means Ecentric drops that means dropping from a small box so that you get used to absorbing that load from the calf and achilles and some small hops but creating that
21:37 progression so that you are prepared when or as you make the change the last thing I'll touch on I lied there's one more is stretching I covered this in an earlier video on stretching but here's the deal the research once again theme of the day all over the place in most shows it probably doesn't help now does that mean IND individually again that someone with a super tight calf or a lot of tension in that area might not
22:04 benefit from stretching of course not they might that might be the key we need to look at an individual level okay but stretching isn't the Cure All that it's often portrayed to be so we need to look at things holistically so let's zoom out what does all this mean it means unfortunately there are no easy answers you cannot do X or Y exercise and magically you're got to be injury prevention king or bulletproof it's just not true the data isn't there we don't
22:35 know unfortunately right now a lot of it is piecing together some data in research with practical wisdom and and insight of what we see or practitioners see on the day-to-day so keep that in mind when we're trying new things or trying ways to prevent or deal with the injury think of it as small experiments hopefully Guided by someone who's seen lots of experiments that's the key I'll tell you as a coach that's how partially how I establish hey your knee is hurting
23:07 let's try X Y and Z you've got some chin splints let's try some repeated toe Taps to work on that muscle underneath the the shin or running parallel to it okay that's how you understand some of this stuff is you see patterns and sometimes you can be fooled but we we combine the research with the pattern what I'll say is the final takeaway is it goes back to the beginning your best bet is to get a
23:34 good coach or follow a good training PR program where you don't do stupid things most training injuries or running injuries are a training error not all but as I said some data shows 60% some 50 some a little above that a little below but the point is this is one factor we can control we don't have great data on how exactly to manipulate it at the big picture an imbalance of stress and recovery of stress training load and B
24:07 recovery being able to absorb that load so does that mean pay attention pay attention make sure if you start feeling something a little off early on increase that recovery decrease that that stress load when you're making changes when you're pushing your performance make sure you're doing it in a smart way where you can gradually absorb it that's your best bet for injury prevention I wish there were some magic cures but there are not so on that Downer best of
24:35 luck we all go through the injury doldrums at some point but you got it be smart don't do stupid things don't hope that you're going to get away with it especially as you're age your body is probably going to win the battle so support it the best you can listen to it so you can back off when you need to and be a little preventive when it's time to