Why do runners to get injured?

While there are many reasons why runner’s get injured I want to share with you what I consider the common causes based on what we treat in clinic.

Posture

I find many clients know they don’t have the perfect posture when they sit at their desks but assume their running won’t be affected.  This is wrong,  bad posture carries over into your run which can put extra stress on your back and knees.  So its important to focus on good running posture which is upper torso straight with head balanced directly over shoulders and lower back not arched.

Training Errors

This is the number 1 cause of running injuries.  Training errors basically means your are trying to run too much or too far or too quickly for your body.  The body needs time to adapt from training changes and jumps in mileage, intensity or changes in terrain.  Muscles need recovery time to they can handle more training demands.  If you rush the process you break can down rather than build up.  Running experts recommend the 10% rule, which means the maximum speed or distance (note I didn’t say speed and distance) you increase by each week is 10%.  So if you run 10 miles in the first week, you run 11 miles in the second week and so on.

RICE – Rest,Ice, Compression and Elevation

All of my clients know rice.  However I find too many runners focus on the I (ice), and ignore the RCE.  So they tend to get stuck in a cycle of ice-and-run, ice-and-run etc without giving the muscles time to heal.  Its like dieting every day until 7pm and then pigging out at the all your can eat buffet!  Remember the R in RICE means rest, i.e. don’t run until the injury is better.

 

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  • What causes my muscles to knot?

    What are knots:

    • Muscle knots are points within a muscle where contracted fibers are unable to relax.
    • The dictionary is: “highly irritable localized spots of exquisite tenderness in a nodule in palpable taunt bands of muscle tissue.”
    • The medical term for muscle knots is myofascial trigger points.
    Knots are thought to be caused by the building up of protein after the release of lactic acid. Knots cause pain in two ways:
    • Active An active trigger point or knot is one that actively refers pain either locally or via nerve pathways to another location in the body.  Active trigger points are the one that clients are aware of and cause them to book to see a masseur.
    • Latent A latent trigger point is one that isn’t painful until pressure is applied to it.  This is when clients come to me and they find that during the massage they feel pain that they hadn’t felt before the treatment.
    How can I prevent knots? Occasional knots are inevitable, but if you get a lot of them it is worth considering the following
    • Your posture
    • Your potassium and calcium levels as both help to prevent knots
    • Being dehydrated doesn’t help
    • Your posture
    • Stretching may help release knots
    How can I release knots? If you didn’t manage to prevent knots you then need to consider how to release them.
    • To self-treat a muscular knot put a tennis ball in a sock (it makes it easier to hold on to the ball), simply place the tennis ball in the sock against either a wall or the floor and then press the part of your body with the knot on to it and move your body up and down.
    • As an alternative, you could apply a deep, stroking massage directly to the muscle knot.
    • The alternative is to visit a masseur.
     

  • Guess what science has discovered about back pain …

    According to the UK's Office for National Statistics the UK  economy loses almost 31 million work days per year which costs the UK economy £14 billion to bad backs, neck & other muscle problems.  A bad back is of the most common causes of absence and 80% of p will suffer with people will experience back pain at some point in their lives.  At Vitality Therapy we find back pain is something we treat on a regular basis. I know a lot of my clients and potential clients are interested in what the latest scientific research is on how effective massage is for treating back pain, becuase they don't want to waste their time and money if massage isn't going to help them. Until now scientific studies of the effectiveness of massage were conducted in controlled research situations.  However in a recent study, a physician sent patients to a massage therapist.  The massage therapist designed and provided a series of 10 massage -- at no cost to the patient -- in a clinical treatment environment.  This clinical treatment environment mimicks the experience of people who choose to seek massage in the real world. More than 50 percent of those who participated in the study experienced clinically meaningful improvements in their low back pain.  The reasearches concluded that the study gives primary care providers (i.e. GPs) the confidence to tell patients with chronic low back pain to try massage, if the patients can afford to do so. References http://www.nhsemployers.org/news/2015/04/bad-backs-cost-the-uk-31-million-days-of-work Elder WG, Munk N, et al, 2017, Real Wold Massage Therapy Produces Meaningful Effectiveness Signal for Primary Care Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain: Results of a Repeated Measures Cohort Study, Journal of Pain Medicine, 18(7):1394-1405  

  • So massage is safe for pregnant women, but is it effective?

    Last week we established that massage is safe for pregnant women.  A scientific review of studies of pregnancy in massage fond that pregnant women who received massage had

    • decreased depression
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    • decreased leg and back pain
    In addition pregnant women who received massage had reduced
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    • reduced excessive fetal activity
    • lower rate of prematurity (a baby being born before its 37 weeks old)
    For pregnant women who received massage during labour they
    • experienced less pain
    • required less medication
    • had shorter labours (on average 3 hours shorter)
    The study concluded massage is effective for pregnant women. Reference Field T. Pregnancy and labor massage. Expert review of obstetrics & gynecology. 2010;5(2):177-181. doi:10.1586/eog.10.12.