If you got a running injury and you’re trying to figure out how to run and you go to the doctor, don’t ask them when you can run, ask them how you can run. That’s what we’re talking about today on Doc On The Run Podcast.
One of the worst questions you can ask a doctor is when can you run and believe it or not, I get these questions every single day. People will go to the doctor. The doctor says, “You can’t run.” Then they’ll call me and they’ll say, “When can I run?” I’m like, “Why am I going to give you the magic answer?” Look, this is the thing. You’ve got to really think about this. The best questions that you can come up with are the ones that direct your doctor to start thinking about how to help you get back to running a whole lot faster.
Don’t go in there just seeing what the doctor says. Go in there trying to get the doctor to get on your team and help you get back to running. Here’s how you do that. First thing, like the title of this episode says, is that when you go in there, don’t ask them for some standard timeline that’s made for all the other people in wheelchairs and walkers and with their canes out in the waiting room. You have to remind them that you’re a runner. So don’t ask them, “When can I run?” Ask different questions like, what do I have to do to run? Is there anything that I can do now that’s going to help me get back to running faster? You’ve got to ask them very specific questions. You got to remember, waiting doesn’t require any effort at all. If you give the doctor a blanket, when can I run?
They’re going to tell you to wait. Wait until the x-ray looks better, wait until it’s been some arbitrary timeline, but you don’t want to do that if you’re a runner. You’ve got to figure out what to do to optimize your nutrition, your sleep, your hydration, and all of the other components of your natural physiology that actually help you heal the injured tissue so that you can get back to running faster than maybe the standard timelines will. But you have to address all of those things, right? You’re not going to train and eat garbage. You’re not going to train and not sleep. You’re not going to train and not stay hydrated. Why? Because you know you have to repair that damaged tissue that you get from your workouts.
When you get an over-training injury because you were running and training for a marathon or an ultra or something else, you just did a little exaggerated version of that. So those exact same things that get you recovered after hard workouts are what actually help you recover from an injury and get back to running faster. So it takes effort, it takes sacrifice, and just like training for a marathon or an ultra-marathon or any higher level of competition, you have to do something.
Waiting is not a plan. Signing up for a marathon is not a plan. That’s not an action. What’s really the action is doing the workouts on a daily basis that actually get you there. You have to do all of those things and look at it from every possible angle if you’re going to speed up your return to running. Now, reducing the time delay between injury and running will only happen if you get very specific advice and you take very specific actions. That’s what you’ve really got to do. It’s not about when, it’s about how.
If you enjoy this episode, please like it, please share it, and I’ll see you in the next training.
#694 Andrea ran 3:09 in the Tokyo Marathon with calcaneal stress fracture! »» |