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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Heat
Last time, I discussed the use of Cryotherapy to aid healing, today I would like to discuss the use of heat. As many of you will know who have had a full body massage treatment with me, I often incorporate hot stones into my treatment. And some of my readers will have heard me say they should use a wheat bag or cherry stone bag or some other type of hot pack. The simple reason why I do this is that most people I treat have one or more knots. A knot is created when a muscle contracts for a sustained period of time and looses its ability to stretch or relax. A simple "muscle knot" will deprive an area of blood, oxygen, nutrients and a thyroid hormone called T3. When a muscle has been deprived of T3 even for a few minutes it will lose its ability to relax, creating the perfect conditions for inflammation and fibrosis (the creation of adhesions). A reduction in the partial pressure of oxygen (to 55 mm of Hg) due to restriction of blood to an area in that muscle will start the inflammatory process that causes the fibrotic condition (adhesion) to proliferate. In the hands of a skilled massage practitioner the knot and any adhesions are located and ideally removed but at least reduced. With the restoration of normal muscle motion, pain is decreased or eliminated, joint motion improves, and normal or near normal activities can be resumed. So heat is often incorporated into a massage treatment treatment because it
- Increases blood supply to an area of the body
- It warms up the muscle tissues to allow them to stretch (relax)
- It reduces muscle spasm

The Impact of Sitting All Day – Part 4
In part 1, I looked at the impact of sitting on your muscles, and in part 2 generally explored the impact on the rest of your body. In part 3 I focused on the impact of sitting on your circulatory system including your heart. In this article I will explore the impact of sedentary behaviour (sitting) and the link to cancer.
So how common is cancer? According to Cancer Research UKAnd here is the good news is more people survive cancer than die from it now.- Every two minutes someone in the UK is diagnosed with cancer.
- 1 in 2 people in the UK born after 1960 will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during their lifetime.
- Breast, lung, prostate and bowel cancers together account for over half of all new cancers each year.
- Overall cancer incidence rates in Great Britain have increased by more than a third since the mid-1970s, with almost this entire rise occurring before the late 1990s.
- 46% of men and 54% of women cancer patients diagnosed in 2010-2011 in England and Wales are predicted to survive 10 or more years.
- Cancer survival in the UK has doubled in the last 40 years.


