Today on The Doc on the Run Podcast, we’re talking about how bad is my stress fracture: 4 critical steps to deciding
When you get a metatarsal stress fracture, and you want to get back to running, you have to make an assessment one how bad it really is. The only other options is to stick with the standard treatments of “don’t do anything for 4 to 6 weeks.”
To do to figure out how bad your stress fracture really is…
There are four critical steps:
1.Look at your foot…look for signs of injury and make note of them!
2.Decide how bad the stress future really is…based on tenderness.
3.Figure out exactly which metatarsal bone hurts the most…that is the one with the stress fracture. That is the one you will need to protect.
4.Make an assessment of how bad the bone hurts.
You have to make note of all of 4 these.
The two reason these steps are so crucial is that you are going to use the 4 data points to do a couple of different things:
A. Help you decide how aggressively you need to treat it now.
B. Be able to track improvement and know when you are ready to increase your activity.
The whole key with healing a stress fracture when you are a runner is to NOT lose you fitness. The metatarsal bone is healing and getting stronger all the time! You have to increase your activity to match the increase in strength of the healing bone at every stage of healing.
If you do that you, you can maintain your running fitness, and get back to running and full training as fast as possible.
There are several question I ask every injured runner who calls me when they think they have a stress fracture.
The Stress Fracture Self-Assessment Worksheet will help you track those changes as they happen. This worksheet can help you figure out whether or not you have stress fracture.
Get the Stress Fracture Self-Assessment Worksheet..print it out…the PDF it is right here…just click on the link and print it out. Fill it out. Use that information to make the right choices as get you back to running.
If you have a question that you would like answered as a future edition the Doc On The Run Podcast, send it to me, and then make sure you join me in the next edition of the Doc On The Run Podcast. Thanks again for listening!