what makes you "injury proof"

Drink until I blackout after hard efforts. Haven't been injured yet!

Work on hip and feet strength. Add mileage slowly and consistently. When you're adding, don't do any major workouts, but continue to do some strides and hills. Don't worry about how long it takes you to get to 75+. When you do get to the mileage you want to be at, camp out there for a month or more. Then start adding back some intensity. Err on the side of doing your workouts too slow, rather than too fast or just right.

Also, I know you're young, but always think long term. You're going to be in that same body for decades and decades, don't wreck anything in your teens that will come back to continually bite you in the ass in your 40s and 50s and beyond.

1.) Slow down.

2.) Stop thinking of it as a 'leap'. Approach it as a slow steady climb and be patient.

3.) Strengthen core...that means hips/glutes/back, not just abs.

4.) Slow down.

Wrap yourself in bubble wrap and fill with packing peanuts.

More recovery and more calories. I used to get injured a lot in college because of a calorie deficit/weight loss that started in high school compounded with overtraining (ran too fast on easy days) and insomnia. At that age, it's tough to know that you need to take better care of yourself than the average person. I used to think I should only eat 1500 calories, when I really should have been eating about 2500-3000 depending on mileage. It was actually a shock to learn how much professional runners consume to keep up with their energy demands because I was surrounded by 16-year-old girls who thought it was healthy to eat a cookie and cheese stick for lunch.

but wont you get fat? will you get injured if you just lose a couple pounds or does the over training occur from heavy weight loss?

motivated HS runner wrote:

I went from completely out of shape to a sub-18 5k in a year (2 XC seasons) but I don't think it's very impressive.

I understand you don't think it's all that impressive. That's why you made sure to provide detail, like "completely out of shape," a time frame, and the exact amount of XC seasons.

Observer of stuff wrote:

Wrap yourself in bubble wrap and fill with packing peanuts.

Some people have allergies to peanuts. The only way to be injury proof is to be dead.

i would suggest favoriting this thread, and compiling a document of the common things said here and sticking it to your bedroom wall because this advice will take you very far..

With that said, emphasis on recovery and listening to your body. consistent effort throughout your early years will bring you success. recovery is 50% of your training. Recovery entails, from most important to less importance (but they are still important):

1. getting quality sleep of 8-10 hours. I suggest chamomile tea at night which helps your body relax and achieve quality sleep.

2. flexibility and self-massage spots. Working on your flexibility every night, and learning to self-massage can be very important. They can tell you what you need to strengthen, and also what areas your body typically feels sore. You can be surprised when you are massaging your body and find spots that are sore even though you don't feel it when walking/running. These sore spots does affect your running and recovery!

3. Nutrition. Good nutrition helps blood flow through your body much easier. Blood carries the nutrients that your muscles need for recovery, and good blood flow from good nutrition speeds up and improves the recovery process.

Not just recovery but also like other posters have said: weight training for your lower legs, hips and your core.

Strengthening all sides of your hips(outer hip, inner hip, hip flexor, glutes) will help stabilize your running especially when under fatigue, which allows you to be more efficient throughout your stride. Stronger hips will ensure less energy leaks out from your stride.

Strengthening your core means weight training for your abdominals, obliques, and your lower back.

Strengthening your lower legs means exercises directed toward the neglected muscles like your calves, foot muscles, shins, that aren't worked out during your squats/deadlifts. As you run longer with more intensity, your lower legs need to be strengthened to avoid those typical runner injuries like plantar fascitis, shin splints, achilles tendinopathy, calf strains.

Sleep, eat, and train in that order. Out of my 3 brothers I was the only one to get a stress fracture. The other 2 added more miles than me, one added a lot more. I unfortunately tried jumping the gun and added to much intensity to fast. Personally I do not think the mileage matters nearly as much as the intensity. The 10% rule is somewhat of a myth. You can add 10,20 even 25% if you keep the intensity down. People tend to not have issues if they add miles at their easy to very easy paces.

motivated HS runner wrote:

but wont you get fat? will you get injured if you just lose a couple pounds or does the over training occur from heavy weight loss?

The overgeneralized estimate is you burn 100 calorie/mile. 75mpw is over 10 miles a day or over 1000 calories/day, in addition to what you need to burn just to be alive, in addition to resting metabolism bumps for people who are active...means it's unlikely you'll get fat if you eat more food but make sure it's quality foods (don't just make up the difference in oreos). If you start to gain a little weight you can back off on the eating a bit, but don't preemptively worry about getting fat before you even gain any weight.

Overtraining occurs from nutrient deficiency or improper recovery (because the body isn't receiving enough fuel to repair the damage you're doing from training). Repair requires fuel. Not literally from weight loss.

itdepends wrote:

Work on hip and feet strength. Add mileage slowly and consistently. When you're adding, don't do any major workouts, but continue to do some strides and hills. Don't worry about how long it takes you to get to 75+. When you do get to the mileage you want to be at, camp out there for a month or more. Then start adding back some intensity. Err on the side of doing your workouts too slow, rather than too fast or just right.

Also, I know you're young, but always think long term. You're going to be in that same body for decades and decades, don't wreck anything in your teens that will come back to continually bite you in the ass in your 40s and 50s and beyond.

This is correct. Patience! And especially true: It is better to do your workouts too slow than too fast.

I am writing all of this from a position of having missed each of those steps! Now that I know them things are going soooo much better. If only I knew (or had a coach who knew) at age 16.

Correct answer: Win the gene pool lottery.

Observer of stuff wrote:

Wrap yourself in bubble wrap and fill with packing peanuts.

Racehorse wrote:

Some people have allergies to peanuts. The only way to be injury proof is to be dead.

But if you wrap yourself in bubble wrap won't you die of suffocation before being able to fill with packing peanuts?

Run on grass. Do doubles. Sleep more. Eat and drink plenty.

One key to avoiding injury is to have confidence in the training that you are doing instead of thinking that you always need to just do more training. The other thing I would point out is that running improvement hinges a lot on a cycle of stress/recovery that builds adaptation. If you aren't allowing for the proper recovery, then you aren't making efficient adaptations, either. It's great that you want to be awesome on the high school level, but you need to understand that you could be even better years later as an adult if you train consistently.

Having said all this most people find excuses not to run and you'll probably end up a better athlete if you train balls out, get hurt, and later learn your limits at a higher plateau than those scrub athletes who never went balls deep.

Higher mileage makes you injury proof. The most injury prone are the guys who run low mileage and try to race 8Ks or hammer long workouts or run their easy days fast.

This worked for me:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e0/Iron_Man_bleeding_edge.jpg/220px-Iron_Man_bleeding_edge.jpg

Hardloper wrote:

Higher mileage makes you injury proof. The most injury prone are the guys who run low mileage and try to race 8Ks or hammer long workouts or run their easy days fast.

Not really. Slowly and steadily building your ability to handle the workload is what makes you have a lower risk of injury. It goes hand in hand with being able to do a higher volume, but it more iterative. Just jumping up to a lot of volume (even with low intensity) will still just get you injured.