how do you stay injury free?

I bathe in linseed oil every night to reduce inflammation. Its worked well, I have only had 3 major injuries in the last 18 months.

Linseed Oil wrote:

I bathe in linseed oil every night to reduce inflammation. Its worked well, I have only had 3 major injuries in the last 18 months.

I've never heard of that one. It seems quite expensive. You may have fallen for the old placebo effect my friend.

I've been doing it since the early 90s. I actually take supplements, bathing in it seems a tad bit overkill.

fisky wrote:

Running Formula reader wrote:

If almost all your injuries are on the right side, you are probably imbalanced. (All of us are, but some are more so than others.)

So you need to figure out what is causing the imbalance, and address that issue. Is there any strength/mobility difference between two sides? Is your running form tilted to one side? Are you running on the surface that is not even (like sidewalks that are tilted)?

This. Get to a physical therapist who understands running and find the imbalance. Then, you can work on whatever is needed.

This. I really feel for u OP. It's just not fair so try to find best pT ur insurance can get. Work with them continuously so you get a picture of how the biomechanics imbalances emerge rather than just troubleshoot onetime a given state. Meantime, support recovery:

Adequate quantity and high quality sleep (easier said than done and I'm still figuring out the tricks myself)

Good nutrition

Not too much pavement, moderate asphalt/track, stick to trails and grass

And last resort incorporate walking And being on your feet (chores, standing lifestyle versus too much desk/study/office work, sitting). Sounds silly with your mileage volume but scientists now think too much sitting degrades health/exercise gains. I heard paAvo nurmi used to do walking. I think it's good for the mood to smell the roses and take it slow rather than only having outdoors thru hard running (and even easy running). I dunno, the walking is last idea tho

good luck! If u break the cycle TELL us on the boards! Inspiration

Use an ointment.

I am a huge believer in hip/glute activation/strengthening, very important. These exercises prevent stress fractures, knee issues, improve kick/ raw speed, and form. The glutes/hip are what stabilizes and generates power while running.

My hip/glute exercises include:

1. Lateral Leg Raises

2. Clam Shells

3. Theraband Lateral Walks, knees slightly bent keeping toes pointed slightly in

4. Glute Bridge Raises

5. Single Leg Balance on a unstable pad/pillow

6. Barbell RDL's

7. Jay Johnson's "Myrtl" routine, youtube it

Anybody have more Glute/Hip exercises? I always love adding more/mixing some in to my routine, hope this helps.

As an NCAA runner, I can tell you these are also very important in my experience if you're a college runner.

1. Try you best to be IN bed by about the same time every night. I have 7 AM practice, I am IN bed by 10:30-11:00 ALWAYS.

2. Eat decent most days, you don't need cookies and ice cream every meal. The more green stuff the better.

3. Take an iron pill with vitamin C every night before bed.

4. Foam Roll whenever you have down time. Work up to PVC pipe and LAX ball. Roll repeatedly over very painful spots and also stop and sit on those spots for around 30 seconds to release.

5. Do core nearly every day. You can keep it simple. Just 6-10 minutes of planks per day can make a difference.

6. Drink Water throughout the day, take water bottle to class. Avoid Gatorade during day, only after runs.

7. Periodically get deep tissue or ART massage.

8. Easy/Hard/Easy/Hard pattern is a pretty good rule to go by in terms of running/ training days.

while injured i am going to get all of this in place for when im back running. managed 2 miles last night and it was pain free although today feels a little tighter than before i ran yesterday so still a way to go

1) single leg balancing on bosu ball 2-3mins each leg

2) weighted single leg calf raises

3) holding a running pose on leg press leg on slightly bent heel slightly off floor

4)weighted walking lunges with weight in one hand

5)clamshell using therabands

6) theraband lateral walks

7) hamstring curls on swiss ball

8) glute bridge raises

9) plank with mountain climbers on bosu ball

10) plank

i think i can do this daily while not running and then i think i will do it 3-4 times per week when im back running on non session/ long run days. does that seem ok?

lifestyle is generally ok. dont eat badly and get 8-9 hours sleep on average.

ElementaryPenguin wrote:

Linseed Oil wrote:

I bathe in linseed oil every night to reduce inflammation. Its worked well, I have only had 3 major injuries in the last 18 months.

I've never heard of that one. It seems quite expensive. You may have fallen for the old placebo effect my friend.

I'm just hoping she was being sarcastic - three major injuries in 18 months?

Go find a good chiropractor. One who works with athletes. Saved my running life.

asdfasdf wrote:

6) Taking it EASY on my runs, and starting VERY easy (I'm a decent bit faster than you, and I average 7:30-7:45 pace most easy days. First mile of my runs is probably over 8min)

This is where I think I'm messing up. But let me ask you this: how often do you run easy? I run a track workout on Tuesday, a tempo run on Thursday, and a long run on Saturday. Should my runs on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday all be at an easy pace?

Strength training, strength training is HUGE. This summer I got the first major injury of my running career (severe calf and hamstring strain in my left leg) and went from unable to run without limping afterwords to running with ZERO issues after literally 4 workout sessions in the gym (about one week total). It was very basic, not-much-though-put-in exercising too, I just rotated through all the leg-related machines in the gym plus hamstring 'curls' with the swiss ball and I was good to go.

Listen to your body. That's all you have to do. You will always get signal to slow down or take it easy.

Ignore that stuff about shortening stride lenght. Keep your natural stride length whatever it is at whatever pace.

(I'll probably jinx myself by posting).

I used to get injured ever other week, sometimes large, sometimes small. I was so convinced it was poor training approaches. I am now convinced it was my cumbersome, long stride.

My friend noticed at a track workout that I was taking really long strides and had a slow cadence. He suggested I run in my track flats on my jogs, concentrating on 180-185 steps per minute. I did this on the treadmill and on jogs. It felt weird and was mentally exhausting at first.

After a while, I felt clunky as hell in bigger shoes, and ran exclusively in racing flats (Asics Piranha being my mainstay). I stopped thinking about the cadence as shorter, quicker strides came naturally to me.

The last year and a half I have been relatively injury free. So much so I am taken by surprise when I get a niggle. After a (for me) brutal, long workout, I simply deal with sore muscles, no tendons, bones etc. Any days I have taken off has simply been from tired legs, not injury. Was quite a revelation.

I agree with avoiding orthotics. One question that is never asked by those prescribing orthotics, and a question that is vital when you think about it, is this: what kind of shoe will you be putting the device into? In other words, if you have an orthotic that reduces pronation, and then you a put that in an "anti-pronation" shoe (I know these terms are under large review these days), then chances are that you doubling the effect and, very possibly, creating a problem on the other side of the issue. As well, great research exists to prove that orthotics weaken your feet, and that is never a good thing.

As for advice on staying healthy, I would say rotate a series of very light shoes through your weekly schedule, run on soft, even surfaces as much as possible, try some barefoot running on a graduated schedule, and "chunk" your runs out over the week, so you're not forced to do, say, a 17-mile run on a Friday morning (when your Sunday LR is 20) just to hit your mileage goal for the week.

I see a chiropractor who knows running mechanics. Works for me. I see him when I start to feel anything abnormal and he seems to take care of it before it forces me to take time off.

Run through it it is better to keep training than stop.if you stop training than you get worse and dealing with pain helps mental toughness it can’t get worse than it already is you won’t die. Runners these days are snowflakes just run and don’t stop

someone in the world wrote:

Try shortening your stride.

This is good and easy advice. I naturally over stride since I have a lot of bounce. It was causing calf and knee injuries. Now when I run if I start to feel pains in my calf and knee I just shorten my stride and it solves the problem. Easy to do and the results are noticeable within a few minutes.