Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast we’re talking about the 3 most important days in healing any running injury.
The biggest mistake any runner can make when seeing a doctor for a running injury is leaving the office without a clear picture or how bad the injury actually may be.
If you don’t have a clear idea of your state of injury, you (or your doctor) are only guessing at how long it will take to get better and return to running.
Part of the lack of clarity is your fault. You have to communicate what really happened when you got injured, what happened between the injury and the day you show up in the doctor’s office, and your running goals.
Without doing all of that, you cannot get an accurate baseline on your injury or expect to use it for comparison as you maintain your fitness now and ramp up your running later.
Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast we’re talking about the 3 most important days in healing any running injury.
In this episode, we’re talking about the three most important days in healing any over-training injury when you’re running. Now, there’s lots of different injuries you can get. You can get a stress fracture, Achilles tendonitis, peroneal tendonitis, anything. It doesn’t matter. But there are really three days that are extremely important if you really want to recover as fast as possible.
Now, the first one is the day that you figure out how bad it is. And I will tell you right now that most people get this wrong. They don’t really get a sense of how bad it is when they go see their doctor. And that’s the biggest mistake runners make when they first go see a doctor with something like a stress fracture. You go in, the doctor looks at you, they poke around on your foot, they take an x-ray, they don’t even see anything on the x-ray, but they say, “Well, based on your history and based on your clinical exam, even though it doesn’t show anything on your x-rays, I think you have a stress fracture. So six weeks. It’ll take you about six weeks to heal.”
Or they may say, “Well, I read this study and it’s about 12.9 weeks for you to get back to activity.” But that doesn’t tell you how bad it is. That just tells you what their guess is, in terms of how long it may take for most of their patients, the average of all their patients, including the old ones sitting in the waiting room with a walker, how long it takes them to get back to activity. So it doesn’t really tell you that much. But it’s really important when you either sit down and figure this out yourself, or if you figure it out with someone else like a running specialist.
So if you see a doctor who is somebody that specializes in running injuries and you tell them, “This is what I do. This is how much I’ve been training. This is what happened when I was training. And this is what I want to do as soon as I heal this thing,” then they can get a better sense of how bad it really is based on your history and all these little specifics that most doctors don’t ask for because they just don’t really care or because they know that you have a stress fracture and they think that you can heal it in a month or a month and a half or something like that.
But you’ve got to really figure out how bad it is if you really want to get better. If you think about this, if you go to an accountant and you say, “Look. I’m in deep financial trouble,” they’re going to ask you, “How much money do you make? How much debt do you have? And what are you going to do about it? What’s your plan? How much can you save? How much can you cut?” All that kind of stuff.
If you get in an automobile accident and you call the insurance company, they’re going to ask you a bunch of questions. “How fast were you going? Did the airbags go off? Was anybody hurt? How much damage is there? What parts of the car are damaged?” And if you have a car and you basically bump into the mailbox in your driveway, well, it’s probably not going to take that long to fix it. But if you flip it over on the freeway, well, that might take a bit longer. And it’s the same is true with all these running injuries. So you’ve got to figure out how bad it is. Day one, that you figure out how bad it is, is extremely important.
The second most important day is when you figure out how to actually get your true baseline. Let’s say you sprain your ankle. Well, if you poke around on it, it hurts everywhere because you have lots of swelling, you have lots of trouble, you have lots of inflammation within the tissue and that causes pain. That’s not your true baseline. So your numbers that day are not where you really are. You have to get rid of the inflammation and do some stuff to actually figure out what your true baseline is.
Then after that, the third most important day is when you figure out how you can reduce the stress on the tissue so you can continue to ramp up your activity and maintain your running fitness while the injury heals. Those are the three most important days when you’re trying to heal a running injury.
Now, if you want more information on this and you want more detail, I can show you how to do it. I actually created a free training series for you. It’s how to fast track your running injury in record time. And if you give me one hour three days in a row, what I’ll do is I’ll show you the process I use with elite athletes who get running injuries and are trying to figure out how to maintain their running fitness and get back to running quicker. So I’ll walk you through the process. It’s free. It’s no cost. Just go sign up. Links are in the comments and on the show notes on the website. But it’s how to fast track your running injury in record time. So go sign up, grab your seat, and I’ll see you in the training.
If you think you have a nagging injury, and you are trying to figure out whether or not you can run, you need to check out How to Fast-Track Your Running Injury in Record Time!
Give me 3 days, and I’ll help you figure out where you are are now, and how you can get back to running in record time. Get started for free right now!
Go grab your seat now. I’ll see you in the training.
