Our Coaching Staff and Personal Trainers will tell you to watch your mileage. Most runners keep their weekly mileage within a safe range most of the time but every so often we get too fired up and increase total mileage too quickly. This often happens when you come back after a layoff or vacation. Sudden mileage increase exceeding 10 percent per week will increase your injury risk.  To avoid injuries as you add on the miles, take an extra day off from running each week. Then add those extra miles to a long-run day. By making each run longer and resting more, you receive a better training effect, as well as quicker healing. And rest every three weeks. Even if you safely stick to no more than a 10 percent weekly mileage buildup, your body can use a break every now and then. You don’t have to stop running but for one week, cut back your mileage by 30 to 50 percent to reduce buildup of fatigue.

When you run, you may be focused on your legs and feet, but your core is very hard at work distributing body weight and maintaining balance and posture, absorbing force, and transferring ground reaction forces which keeps you on your feet.

When your core functions well, movement is coordinated, efficient, and stable. As a result a strong and competent core can help you avoid common running injuries because movement will be smooth and efficient. As core competency and overall neuromuscular efficiency decreases you will fatigue, start to compensate and ultimately risk injury.

So whether you are interested in peak running performance, injury rehabilitation, or injury prevention, core strength training is critical to performance and why our Veteran Training Personal Trainers focus so much on this type of conditioning. So in your next training session smile when doing abs and just think about why it’s so good for you.

Most running injuries occur early on, and are usually the result of doing too much, too soon, with too little rest – then continuing to run after feeling the first hint of pain. Our Running Coaches in Pembroke Massachusetts suggest you begin training at a relatively easy level and make only moderate weekly increases in distance or speed. And be careful not to do both at the same time. On alternate weeks slightly decrease the intensity or duration of your workouts, and increase again the following week. Using this “leap frog” approach, instead of unrelenting increases in your training will help you avoid the pitfalls of repetitive stress, and will result in greater fitness gains.

At Veteran Training we  receive  more and more  Triathletes and Marathon Runners coming to us right before their athletic event these days with Runners pain. From first time Nantasket Triathlon competitors to weekend warriors about to run,bike and swim in the local Cohasset or Duxbury Triathlon, many of our new clients ask for help with a common tendonitis sports related injury. After decades of training Elite Military Units expected to walk 35 miles in a day to Boston Marathon hopefuls hoping to run their 26.2, we can say hands down that we specialize in endurance, stamina and physical injury recovery in Massachusetts. 

We have personally experienced and found training to develop, treat and overcome this incredible problem not just with medical knowledge but hands-on-experience.  We started taking great pride in the fact that nearly 20% of our clients are Doctors and Nurses calling Us for a Veteran Training recovery program and asking us to get them back on their feet to return to their sport.

So what is Tendonitis?

TENDONITIS is one of the most common sports injuries. It’s an overuse injury where repetitive movements such as jumping, running or swinging an object put repetitive stresses on a tendon which can cause micro tears and result in inflammation and pain. Runners can suffer from tendonitis in the knee, hip, foot, Achilles tendon and in the ankle. Achilles tendonitis is a very common running injury and can become chronic if not properly handled.

Tendonitis is usually first noticed after exercise or even the following morning. In the early stages pain felt at the beginning of exercise sometimes may disappear after the muscles are warmed up. This is one reason that tendonitis is so common. The athlete feels that they can run through the pain in these early stages and the injury becomes more aggravated.

 TREATMENT

The first step in treating tendonitisis to stop the activity that caused the injury. If you catch the injury early enough a reduction in the activity may be sufficient. Cold therapy is the second step of treatment and will help to decrease the inflammation and pain. If you are continuing the activity, be sure to ice the area immediately after exercise and try to apply ice to the area 4 to 5 times a day for 10 to 15 minutes. After the inflammation and pain has been eliminated it’s time to start rehabilitation by stretching the affected area 4 to 5 times a day. The next step is strength training to strengthen the muscles and connective tissue, and when you’ve regained full strength you can re-start activity at an easy pace. If you feel pain at any point, you may be trying to progress too quickly so back off a bit. Patience and a good Veteran Training plan here will pay off in the long run.

If you have access to a pool deep-water running is a super, no-impact cross-training activity for anyone who wants to build or preserve leg strength. It uses the same muscles as running on land, and is especially appealing to runners who are prone to or recovering from injuries. Aqua jogging can be very intense, but very forgiving on the body at the same time because of it’s non-impact nature. If your form is good, you can perform hard aqua jogging workouts on consecutive days and maintain fitness, VO2 max, and lactate threshold without risk of over training or injury.