Tuesday, November 5, 2013

WHY RUNNERS GET INJURED. -- Part 1

There is a cause and effect for everything. After 43 years of distance running and over 30 years of coaching, I've seen a wide variety of injuries, but they all stem from a few basic causes. If you discover the cause, most of the time you can solve the injury problem.

When I was a freshman in high school back in 1971, I went out for the track team. After two weeks of practice everything hurt from my arches up through my knees. Granted, the running shoes back then were less effective at supporting your feet than bedroom slippers. When the pain got to the point where I could no longer run, Coach McKim said, "Ellis boy, go see the trainer." Coach McKim called everybody "boy" including the girls.

Our trainer was an old teacher by the name of Mr. Art Simpson. Mr. Simpson was big, bald, and gruff, the kind of guy who would send a get well card to a hypochondriac. When I told him my symptoms, he applied the one tape job he had done a million times--the arch and ankle mummy wrap. By the time I left the training room, I was walking like Frankenstein. Running was impossible.  To make a long story short, after taking two weeks off I was able to start practicing again.

That intro leads to the first cause of running injuries:
1. TOO MUCH TOO SOON
 I grew up in a blue collar football town where accepting pain was a part of life, and good coaches made their athletes suffer. As a young distance coach back in the 80s, I pushed my runners hard. Unfortunately, I pushed many of them into injury. With more experience I grew wiser. I learned that new runners or runners who were starting again after a long break needed to build gradually. I had to completely deprogram the old-school philosophy of no pain no gain.
 
I discovered there is good pain and bad pain. Good pain occurred when a healthy runner pushed himself or herself hard in a workout, fighting against lactic acid build up and oxygen debt. Bad pain occurred when muscles were not ready for the stress applied to them. As a coach I was responsible for determining the limits of that stress.
 
New runners need to build slowly, gradually over several months. The right amount of stress needs to be applied to their bodies so that only slight damage occurs to  their muscles. Did I say damage? Yes. Muscles grow stronger because they become damaged by exercise but then repair themselves stronger than they were before. A good coach understands just how much stress needs to be applied.
 
Soreness is a part of everyday running. It's a sign that the muscles are being stressed. But soreness that increases over several days is a sign to STOP! REST! CROSS TRAIN! Let the muscles recover before more serious problems result. No two runners are the same. Training yourself or coaching someone else is an art as well as a science. A good coach knows when to let up, when to pull back, when to stop and let a new runner recover and then build themselves up at their own rate.
 
Questions or comments can be posted below or sent to joecellis@comcast.net .
 
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