What are the best exercises to prevent stress fracture?

donuts wrote:

Yes, jog more, as much as you can. Jog so much that you have to go drag-ass slow. Maybe try 5 miles a day to start. Faster running is higher stress. You want to find the stress level that is lower than what you are doing now that is getting you "injured", but do more of it. Consider this more like a pre-requisite to get your legs stronger before do a training plan to get faster.

Your body doesn't know how to run. Your form must suck if you get injured so easily. I imagine you are pounding your legs each time your feet land. There is a lot less pounding when you jog, and if you do enough of it, maybe you'll adopt a better form. Do form drills like I and others suggested last month. You never reported back that you did any.

Give me some examples of good form drills to do.

Do these. You might need to time to figure some of them out, start with high knees and butt kicks. Notice she is landing on the front of her foot in all these drills.

https://youtu.be/vcH97Dx8VCk

donuts wrote:

Do these. You might need to time to figure some of them out, start with high knees and butt kicks. Notice she is landing on the front of her foot in all these drills.

https://youtu.be/vcH97Dx8VCk

Thank you

donuts wrote:

Do these. You might need to time to figure some of them out, start with high knees and butt kicks. Notice she is landing on the front of her foot in all these drills.

https://youtu.be/vcH97Dx8VCk

I did all of those drills during summer training for XC last year, yet I still get a stress fracture

Although arbitrary, Daniels advises increasing mileage by 1 mile per the number of runs per week after you’ve been at a certain volume for 4 full weeks. For example, if you run 20 mpw with 5 runs per week for 4 weeks, your 5th week would be 25.

I’ve used this myself for years. It works very well. Have you looked into Daniels’ running formula? It might work wonders for you

I haven't read all the posts so sorry if someone hit on this.

If you are serious and the lower leg (most common) is your concern; there was a study done with army boot camp soldiers. That is the number one demographic for lower leg stress fractures, followed by dancers, then runners according to the study.

They performed two sets of toe raises to exhaustion in the morning and again in the afternoon and reduced stress fractures and shin splints considerably. The theory is that even a millimeter of added muscle girth causes the bone to respond to support it.

That certainly is not time consuming and will not hurt anything so worth a look.

david45 wrote:

I did all of those drills during summer training for XC last year, yet I still get a stress fracture

The purpose for drills is to help improve your form. Do some strides after doing drills. Your legs will feel more coordinated (therefore faster) after drills if you haven't done them in a while. Keep doing them. Drills are not a cure-all for form, but they help.

Band exercises, Toe/heel walks, calf raises. Pretty much anything to strengthen the lower leg muscles.