What is the one biggest mistake any doctor can make with a runner who has been on crutches? Well, that is what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run podcast.
I was just giving a lecture at the 46th annual International Foot & Ankle foundation meeting at the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle.
A foot surgeon in the audience asked a great question during the question-and-answer period following one of my lectures. Specifically, the lecture was medical imaging strategies to avert misdiagnosis in runners.
She asked, “After a runner has been offloaded with crutches and placed in a fracture walking boot or a cast for immobilization, do you incorporate cross training, or only focus on running?”
My answer was simple. Most runners want to run. Most doctors also want to let the runner run. One misconception in endurance athletes that leads to imbalances that predisposes them to re-injury is an over attentive focus on running itself as the sole rehabilitation activity.
The biggest mistake any doctor can make after a runner has been on crutches or immobilized in a fracture walking boot is to simply let the runner loose without limits. The most common post-injury instruction phrase I hear from doctors that does this is to say to the runner, “go ahead and run, and just let pain be your guide.”
This is a huge mistake.
What I have been teaching at medical conferences for more than a decade, and what I have also been trying to teach to runners in podcast episodes, videos and courses is that the strategy has to be…
This is the basic strategy underlying all the masterclasses I teach to runners on specific conditions that afflict runners as over-training injuries. All of those masterclasses are free, and if you don’t understand the basic strategy behind them, none of the tactics I can share with you will ever help you.
If you have an injury and have been on crutches or in a fracture walking boot after an overtraining injury, make sure that you ask your doctor exactly how you can get stronger, become more stable and only then systematically increase the stress and strain applied to that one structure that got injured, before you to return to running.
For example, if you have a plantar plate injury, you may want to check out the Plantar Plate Masterclass at www.docontherun.com/plantarplatemasterclass, or if you have a stress fracture, you may want to check out the Stress Fracture Masterclass at www.docontherun.com/stressfracturemasterclass.
Go check it out and I’ll see you in the training!
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