Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we’re talking about which weekday is best to add workouts for injured runners.
Let’s say you’re starting to work out. You’re starting to regain some fitness after an overtraining injury, like a stress fracture or a plantar plate injury or something. And let’s say that you’re doing workouts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
And the question is, “Should I add my next workout on Saturday or Sunday if I want to do four workouts that week?”
The reason for this episode two runners today, both very experienced runners, “…said that’s a tough one!” when asked them this question.
That was exactly what they had going on. They were working out Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and they wanted to add an additional day on the weekend. And so I asked them, well, which one do you think is the best day? And they were both seemingly confused.
It’s not a tough question at all.
This is a really simple one.
Think about what you do in training. You’re ramping up. You have your Monday run. You run harder on Wednesday, you run harder on Friday, and the next Monday you know that that workout is going to be harder still because you’re ramping up from a point of zero.
Because you’re injured, you’re adding more and more and more and more stress as you go. So every consecutive workout is basically stronger.
The real question is, which is more stressful overall running on Saturday or Sunday, if you know that you’re going to have Monday and then Wednesday and then Friday and then Monday again to be all stronger, harder workouts.
The better question here is,
“Is it more stressful to add the workout the day after a slightly easier run, which would be Friday or the day before, a slightly harder run, which would be Monday.”
When I rephrased the question and ask both of these runners that question during a consultation calls, they said, well, you know, if you feel okay after a Friday workout and you workout on Saturday. Now you have a full day of rest before the increase in intensity that’s supposed to happen on Monday. If you do that workout on Saturday, well, Monday is going to be like a next level workout. So add in your workout the day after your easier one, which is Friday, is way better than adding it on Sunday. You don’t want to go do another workout on Sunday and then have an even harder workout on Monday.
If you think about it that way and you’re just thinking about your return to running plan and those pieces that you’re trying to put together to formulate that plan, always think about where is the lowest risk.
And again, if you’re ramping up and you’re going to add an additional day, add it to have the full amount of recovery before your harder workout. That is really, really important. If you keep that one piece in mind, it will really help you get back to running a whole lot faster.
If you’re trying to figure out the little pieces like this that you might be missing, you can get on a strategy call with me. It’s a ten minute call where we discuss the pieces that you may be missing, that you’re overlooking, and your return to running plan. You can book that by going to docontherun.com and click on the “Talk To The Expert” tab and block my calendar there.
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