Don’t search for less than what is needed. That’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
After years of doing the Doc On The Run Podcast and making YouTube videos to explain all of these conditions to runners that can interfere with running when we get injured, well, I get lots of interesting questions. We’ve had over a million views on YouTube, and I don’t know how many downloads of the podcast, but it’s a lot. I get lots of questions.
Mostly, there are people who are trying to find a shortcut and they think that the solution is in one thing most of the time. I get questions like, “Should I use a metatarsal pad?” Or, “Should I switch to low drop shoes?” Or, “Should I tape my plantar plate sprain?” Or, “How should I tape my plantar plate sprain?” When you think about this, if you think about the way we go about things as runners, let’s talk about what it takes to complete a marathon.
This is a big undertaking. You have a big thing that you need to get ready for. You need to get stronger, you need to be prepared. If somebody came to you and said, “I want to run a marathon, which shoes do I need?” Okay, well, that’s one piece of it. “Well, what kind of hat do I need? What kind of GPS watch or heart rate monitor should I have? What’s more important? The long run, the tempo run, or my speed work?” It’s not one of those. It’s all of those.
The thing is when you’re injured and you’re a runner, you really have to think about this in terms of just put it into perspective of all the things you do to maintain your fitness and actually be prepared for race day when you’re training for an event like a marathon. That’s really what you need to do here. The bottom line is that there are really a couple of things you have to do.
Number one, you need to know how bad the injury is, and that is the most important thing. It’s actually more important to know the severity of the injury, the actual name of the injury itself. It’s way more important to know how much pain you have, so you’ve got to be able to track your pain. That’s the second thing. You’ve got to track your pain so that you can make sure that you know how bad it is right now, and that also, as soon as it starts to improve, you can actually start increasing your activity level so you can maintain your running fitness while you’re recovering instead of waiting to try to get your fitness back after you recover.
The third thing is that you have to make sure that you strengthen everything that is not injured so that you can better support and protect that one injured part. Remember, you have one plantar plate sprain, or you have one metatarsal stress fracture. You don’t have an entire foot that’s injured, you just have one part of it that’s injured. If you’re careful about this, you actually can add exercises and do strength training that will actually support that injured part, but you really have to think about everything that you need to do to fast track your recovery, and every single thing that you add to fast track your recovery will speed it up faster.
It really is that simple. Don’t think it’s one pad, don’t think it’s one kind of shoe. Look at all the stuff that you need to do and try to think about everything else that your doctor didn’t even explain to you that could possibly help you, because there’s no way that in a five-minute doctor visit, your doctor is going to go through all of the other things that contribute to your recovery or your injury.
It’s just not possible. That’s up to you. You’ve got to think about all of those other things that you can do to speed up the recovery and get back to running as quickly as possible. Just remember, don’t search for less than what’s actually needed. Now, if you like this episode, please like it, please share it, and I’ll see you in the next training.
