How to Not Lose Running Fitness When Injured
Injuries are a real pain in the [insert your injured part here] … But, really, injuries are a real buzzkill. Most doctors and healthcare professionals will tell you you need to rest when you're injured. But, you’ve made all this progress… rest will put you back to the beginning. So how do you maintain your fitness when you have to take a break from running? I’ll lay it out for you, keep reading.
In this article:
Running While Injured
Did you know you don’t necessarily have to give up running while you’re injured? Sometimes too much rest makes you worse in the long term.
Don’t get me wrong, you need some kind of rest, but it’s likely not complete rest. And if you’re like the majority of runners with a running injury, it’s not an all-or-none injury. 80% of running injuries are caused by overtraining, so for those runners they can actually keep running if they do less, but not nothing.
Should you rest?
Like I said before some rest is necessary. Like you may take a few days off completely from running. And you may run fewer days in the week than you were before. And you definitely will run fewer miles than you were before. But, complete-lay-on-the-couch-rest is not the answer.
Complete rest ends up giving runners a false sense of healing. The complete rest will absolutely make you feel better in the short term.
But, most runners once they’ve had a few weeks of rest they’ll jump right back into the same amount of training they were doing before they took a break.
This ends up making the injury worse.
It ends up worse because for tendon, muscle and ligament injuries the lack of exercise reduces their tolerance to the load, or activity. That means that the next time you go to run your muscles, tendons and ligaments aren’t able to tolerate the same amount as before so if you go out and do the same amount your body will want you to stop sooner but you’ll push through and push past your body’s limits.
What to do instead?
Instead of complete rest, keep doing things. Do things that don’t hurt.
This is where running less and with less intensity comes into play. But, it’s also where leaning heavy on cross training comes into play.
Running
When you’re injured you should run less. But how much less?
That depends.
There are a few ways to figure this out:
Go back to the distance that didn’t hurt
Compare it to how much you can walk
Test it
If you know a distance that doesn’t hurt, go back to that distance for a while.
For example, Christina did her first every 10 mile run but tweaked her calf. She thought back and remembered that her long run 3 weeks prior, 7 miles, didn’t hurt, but the other long runs leading up to 10 miles weren’t comfortable but not this painful. She went back to running 7 miles max and that didn’t bother her calf.
If you can’t remember a distance that is comfortable, I don’t recommend just trying out different distances to see what feels fine. So if you can’t think of anything keep reading:
Compare it to how much you can walk that’s comfortable.
This advice is someone who is also walking regularly. Again, if you aren’t doing this already, no need to go out for a walk and keep guessing.
But many runners also walk for exercise. So you can take the distance you can walk comfortably, cut it in half, and that’s the max distance you can run.
For example, Maria takes her dogs on a long walk every other day, and short ones, daily, but her long walk is 3-4 miles. She hurt her knee during her long run and it didn’t bug her on the walk until she hit 4 miles. So for her walking 4 miles hurts, so she backed it down to 3 miles is comfortable. Then we cut that in half: run 1.5 miles max for Maria.
Finally, if you don’t walk regularly for exercise and you don’t know a comfortable distance to run this step is the one for you: test it.
When I was in the physical therapy clinic with patients after surgery or injury I put them through a return to running program formed by Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Over the years I have taken this information from a strict return to running program to a test for injured runners to do to pinpoint the exact distance they should run that their injury can tolerate it.
If this option sounds like a good one for you, you can download the Free step-by-step guide to complete this test in your living room, plus the guide will give you your first 2 weeks of mapped out training with how much to run, cross train, stretch and strength train. Get access here.
Cross training
Cross training is so important for running in general, but especially when you’re injured.
Cross training gives your heart and lungs a workout to maintain or gain endurance, and works the rest of your body without the same stress that running puts on it.
The correct cross training varies per person, and I recommend finding something that works for you.
I like to walk for cross training. I don’t recommend walking as cross training for someone doing the run walk method, instead walking would be part of your running routine.
You may be asking “but how do I get my heart rate up with walking?” You can get your heart rate up with walking by increasing your speed, walking uphill or walking on an incline on a treadmill.
Other cross training includes (but not limited to):
Swimming
Cycling outside
Spin class
Rowing machine (ERG)
Roller skating
Ice skating
You want to choose something you like and gets your heart rate up like you would get from running.
How to train while injured
So while you’re injured you’re going to run the distance that’s comfortable, not painful, and you’re going to supplement the rest with the equivalent amount of cross training.
For example, if you can comfortably run 2 miles and you run 3x/week with 2 short runs and 1 long run, and your last long run distance was supposed to be 10 miles.
You could run 2 miles 3 days a week, keeping the 2 short runs strict at just 2 miles, and your long run do 2 miles of running and the equivalent of 8 miles of cross training.
Let’s say you run a 14 minute mile pace, 8 miles at that pace would be 112 minutes of activity (1 hour 52 minutes), and you like cycling.
For training this may look like:
Monday: run 2 miles
Tuesday: 30 minutes cross training
Wednesday: run 2 miles
Thursday: rest
Friday: Long run 2 miles + 1 hr 52 minutes cycling
Saturday: rest
Sunday: cross training
You could go for your 2 mile run and then go for an hour and 52 minutes of cycling.
Watch your heart rate on your watch to keep it inline with your heart rate from previous long runs so then you know how fast to cycle.
What else?
There are other factors that go into rehabbing an injury that I won’t go into in this post because I wanted to keep it strictly to keeping your fitness levels while you’re injured.
But, please know that a full training program/plan also includes strength training, using the proper shoes and equipment, stretching, actively doing recovery tactics, and fueling properly to get the right nutrition to help heal injuries.
If you’re injured and training for a race, it’s not the end…
you can keep training and you can cross that finish line and get the shiny medal at the end! Follow these steps laid out here while you’re injured so you don’t lose your fitness and can continue to work toward your goal. If you’re looking to train while injured I invite you to download the Free guide here.
