Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about why you need to execute your healing plan with the same tenacity you execute a training plan.
There’s an interesting thing with all runners, we decide to sign up for a race and we start training. We follow a specific plan that we know will get us day-by-day, stronger and stronger to our race, prepared to achieve our goal in our goal time. But what happens when you get injured?
You basically do something completely opposite, completely different, and not at all in alignment with the strengthening process that you know works when you’re training and doing tissue damage, and recovering on a daily basis. I mean, think about this.
If you sign up for a marathon, and somebody said, “What did you do?” And you say, “Well, I signed up for a marathon.” They say, “Oh, what are you doing to get ready for that?” And would you say, “Well, I’m just waiting for the race. So, if I just think about it and I just sit around, and I ought to be ready when the race gets here, don’t you think?” Well, no, that’d be ridiculous.
You would do something, you would do something daily. You would look at your plan, you would plan it all out in terms of what you need to do, how often you need to eat, when you need to train. You would do something daily, hourly, repeatedly. You would follow a plan and you would think about that plan all the time.
But that doesn’t happen when people get injured. They basically get injured and the doctor says, “Well stop running. Just give it a rest.” And what do you do? You sit, and you think, and you stew, but you don’t actually do anything. You’re just sitting still.
A
ll training plans have some very basic components.
You have long runs.
You have speed work sessions. You have tempo runs.
You have strength training to supplement your running fitness, and then you have some very specific strategies for recovery in between all of those workouts.
So what’s a healing plan?
Well, a healing plan is the same kind of thing. It really contains a bunch of different components, just like a training plan has anywhere from three to five components depending on how you’re thinking about it, a healing plan’s the same.
You basically have stress reduction, you have inflammation reduction, you have inflammation control, tissue repair, and supportive strengthening to support that injured part once you actually return to activity. If you’re going to do that, if you’re going to reduce the stress you have to have a plan for that.
If you’re going to have a reduction in the amount of inflammation in your foot or your ankle, or whatever is injured, you have to have a plan for that. You have to have some way, some plans, some thing you’re doing to actually control inflammation and stop the rebound inflammation that can keep you locked in this sort of inflammatory cycle that actually damages tissues long-term.
You have to have some specific plan and strategy for fueling your body and enabling the tissue repair to actually take place to that one injured part. And then, you also have to have a very specific plan to get strength built in all of the other structures that can support and protect that one injured part.
So you have to talk to your doctor, you have to talk to your coach. You have to talk to your teammates or your running buddies, or whoever that can help you, give you the information you need so you can get back on track.
But if you want to be on track, you’ve got to talk to an expert, you’ve got to come up with a plan, you have to develop an actual healing plan.
Sitting on your behind waiting to get stronger is not a plan, that is inactivity and that is not going to get you where you want to go. You need an action plan, you need a specific plan to follow, and you need to have a timeline of the expectations for when that plan will actually come to fruition.
And if you do all that, you can get back to running sooner.
If you have a question that you would like answered as a future addition of the Doc On The Run Podcast, send it to me PodcastQuestion@docontherun.com. And then make sure you join me for the next edition of the Doc On The Run Podcast!
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