Running with an injury or after being injured is simple. It can be done if you follow these steps outlined. Rest is part of the process, but not the whole process. When you know what to stop doing, and what to do instead you’ll be able to keep running.

If you’re an injured runner you want to know if you can keep running or if you should rest.

Let me explain… complete rest where you do nothing can be the worst thing you do for your knee pain. Your knee needs support… just resting from running for a month and getting back into it without strength is setting you up for disaster.

Physical therapy has a time and a place. Typically, physical therapy works great for a new, acute injury or a new surgery. The sooner you get into physical therapy the quicker a problem with a muscle, tendon, joint or ligament will be controlled. Most often physical therapy doesn’t work for someone because they only went 2x/week for 4 weeks. This is too short of a time period to notice a change, it typically takes 3 months for longstanding pain and inflammation to get under control. Physical therapy may not have worked for you because you went to the wrong type of physical therapist. Physical therapists can specialize and if you go to one for a condition they don’t typically see they may not tell you that and just try and help you anyway. Physical therapists often have 20-40 patients on their schedule so they don’t have much time with each individual patient so questions are left unanswered and exercises are left too easy or too hard. If you’re only doing the techniques and things at PT 2x/week it likely won’t help because most of the changes need to be small habitual changes that happen daily, like handling pain and inflammation that need daily attention. So if you were told to go to physical therapy for 2x/week for 4 weeks and felt like it didn’t work, or it wasn’t right for you. You may be right, but also, you may have hit a snag in the traditional model and still could benefit from the things they teach you in physical therapy.