Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about the secret to healing like a pro runner.
Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about the secret to healing like a pro runner.
When pro runners get running injures, they get different treatment.
But its not just better, faster care, it is also the approach pro runners take to the recovery process that helps them accelerate their recovery from a running injury.
I was just lecturing at a medical conference and one of the talks I was giving was about how the standard of care fails athletes. Now, what that means is that the standard treatments that we would do, like what a reasonable physician would do most of the time in a community with their level of training, what that means for athletes. And specifically how those things that we do to treat specific injuries like Achilles tendonitis or peroneal tendonitis, or metatarsal stress fractures, how those things actually can put you, like as a runner, at risk later for different over training injuries. That is completely unnecessary.
One of the things that I brought up was that there was a very large study, one of the largest studies that was ever published on running injuries and what actually causes running injuries. And I was talking to these doctors, to a few hundred doctors about why it is that when the authors and investigators on that study decided who they were going to include in this study, they eliminated professional runners, they eliminated elite athletes from the study.
And they said we presume that elite athletes, professional athletes, they all have, if not better medical care, they certainly have more consistent follow up, earlier interventions and better access to specialists than the average person. So we know that something is different when someone is a professional athlete. So it’s not just that they have magical potions available to them, it’s not just that they have specific experts in their field who are there attending to them. That’s part of it.
But the thing that is really the secret to healing like a pro runner is not what you might think. It is really the same thing that got them to be a professional in the first place, that got to them to be competing at a world champion level. It’s that they’re dedicated to looking very specifically at what the task is in front of them.
I work with lots of elite athletes, I work with lots of normal athletes, I do telemedicine consults for all kinds of different people. But the people who heal like professionals actually look at what’s going on, they make a clear assessment on what’s going on, they create a very clear path to change and get from where they are, to where they want to be and they execute on that plan daily. They make a very concerted effort to try every single day to do something more than they did the day before.
So every day when I do telemedicine consults and I’m checking in with somebody that signed up for a one month package, where I check in with them every single day, what I do as the last thing on the call and say, “Okay, what are you going to do today that’s going to move you forward that you didn’t do yesterday?”
And that’s part of the deal. You have to understand that if you can do that yourself, you’re going to move forward faster.
That’s part of why I created the Runners Rapid Recovery Journal. It basically goes through these exercises to help you get a clear picture of where you are, where you want to be and how you can take everything that you learned in training and apply it to your healing. So go check it out. It’s available in the show notes of this particular episode at docontherun.com, under the podcast tab. Just remember the secret to healing like a pro runner isn’t having some professional doctor on your team. It’s coming up with a plan. So go check out the Runners Rapid Recovery Journal, create your plan, go through those exercises, take stock of what you know and apply it to what you need to do right now.
Go check it out!
Get the Runner’s Rapid Recovery Journal…
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