INJURIES

The other day a friend (who is also injured) asked how I could keep running even with an injury, so this is my answer:

• It really depends on what injury you have...
• PAIN learn to know what pain is injury related...
• Warm up your injury before you start..

OK so with those things in mind legs have a look at a couple of injuries that I've had and how I've managed them: I've had ITB and a couple of my athletes have had ITB, and yes you could pop off to the physio for treatment and rehab, but why stop running? You don't have to, but Coach my knee gets sore after 5km and I can hardly walk!!! So only go out for a 4km run then... and run twice a day if you need more running, I once ran an 8km race with my leg straight (maybe not a good idea) but it was sore if I bent the knee!)

Now onto this injury I currently have: Adductor Tendonosis!

Please note I have spoken to the Sports Doctor, the Physio, and the Bio, so I do have the green light to do this, but I was doing this before I saw any of them just don't tell anyone!

Firstly warm-up the injury, and not by running, and not by stretching, stretching is really just pulling the injury and how can that help... So get the blood flowing, maybe you could walk a bit or rub the injury, I use this before most of my runs:

good stuff

and then I also an running in compression tights to help the blood flow!

Now with a lot of injuries it's a muscles or tendon (some with some bones / stress fractures) so you can normally feel if you are doing more damage. OK I can run without pain... so I run without pain, the problem is I have to run slowly and I don't like running slowly. I like to be on a track running reps, or intervals on the road. You see, too run fast you need to lengthen your stride, and that stretches (puts strain on) the tendon. So I only run slowly, I've been running hills on the road, I can run slowly and hills are slow and good for you!

The other thing I can't really do is long single track and technical downs. Both require core and stabilising and as things stand I don't have much of that!!! so I tire and the tendons start to fall apart again.

Would you believe it if I told you I have hardly been on my mountian in 3 months!!! (we won't count the couple of races I had to run!!!)

Good Luck in managing your injuries as it looks like mine is slowly coming right!