Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast we’re talking about how runners do not recover faster by guesswork.
I was just talking to a runner in one of the sessions where people call in who are taking the One Run Away challenge. In that challenge course, I’m helping you try to figure out what is the step that you’re not taking that is holding you back from recovering as quickly as possible. So this is the thing that goes on and every few days I do calls and let people ask questions
directly to me over webcam.
I got an interesting question and this was about how to actually do something that Dr. Schreider talked about during the recent runners rapid recovery summit. Now he works with professional soccer players and he was talking about how he gets athletes back on track after they have an Achilles tendon rupture and have to have surgery. Now these are professional athletes. So the owner of the team is not going to do things by guesswork. They want to make sure that these athletes are on track as quickly as possible.
And this is exactly what you should be doing when you’re trying to recover on your own. So the simple things that you need to do and none of it involves guesswork. I don’t make any decision based on wild guesses. I get direct messages on Instagram, I get questions on Facebook, I get questions that are posted as comments on YouTube that always says something to the effect of “Hey I’ve got a fibular stress fracture, here’s a picture of my X-ray I took with my cell phone. How soon you think I’ll be back to activity? How do you how soon you think I will be able to run again?“
Well I don’t know. I don’t ever reply to those because I’m not going make wild guesses. I would never take an image of an X-ray taken with a cell phone and not know anybody’s story and try to make an assumption about when they’re going to get back to activity because I have no idea. It’s just somebody who’s dedicated? Is this somebody who follows directions? Is this somebody who’s doing sensible stuff and reasonable stuff now or not?
I don’t know but actually I don’t guess with any of these people. And I don’t think you should guess with yourself.
If you’re listening to this right now and you have an over training injury or you’ve had some kind of injury that’s just not making progress, you shouldn’t be trying to make decisions based on wild guesses. You should keep track of everything. You should take note of everything that you’re doing every day and you should look at your results. You should test things and track what happens and then you should test again. So you should take your foot out of the boot in and push on it and see if it hurts and track that. Write down how much it actually hurts. Write down what you actually did. How much walking you are doing the day before when you’re out running and you notice you have pain, when did you have pain? Was it ten steps out your front door or was it ten miles in your run?
But you have to make sure that you test, track and test again then you can decide what you need to change. But the whole goal when you have a running injury is to make sure that you don’t lose your fitness. Make sure you don’t get weakness, stiffness, loss of neuromuscular connections, all the bad things that actually happened when you’re getting better and you are healing that one piece of tissue but everything else is getting worse, you have to fight. That is an active process because if you’re not training, you’re decaying. You really have to make sure that you continue to make progress by very carefully testing and tracking and then testing again.
That’s what we do in the One Run Away Challenge. We basically give you a structural way to come up with a goal and then figure out how you are going to take steps every day to achieve that goal. But that’s how you do it and none of it is by guesswork.
I would like to invite you to join what may be the most effective and most cost-effective way for you to get back on track when you have any kind of overtraining injury. If you feel stuck and you feel like you are not getting anywhere.
One of the secrets to recovering like an elite athlete, like a professional is to take a step-by-step approach and step-by-step evaluation and little actions every single day.
So what I created is the One Run Away Challenge.
The fact is you are only one step away from the next phase of your recovery. You are only one run away from your next long run.
The One Run Away Challenge is going to help you with the step-by-step instructions over a 10 day course to figure out what you are doing that’s keeping you stuck, figure out what you are doing wrong, what you have been missing and what you are not doing.
Not only will I give you the step-by-step instructions on how to make those determinations as you go through this process all on your own, I will actually support you and lead you by the hand as we go through this process. I will be doing six WebCam calls per week, where you can call, come and check in with me. Ask me anything you want, ask me any specific questions and get very specific directions live from me throughout the entire process.
Join the One Run Away Challenge!
Enrollment is open only for a short period of time and then it closes again because we only have 25 places available because I have to be able to answer people’s questions. It is only 25 people at a time, so if you want one of those seats go to DocOnTheRun.com/CHALLENGE and make sure that you grab your seat.
I’ll see you there!
