Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about single leg exercise benefits for injured runners.
I am going to make a statement and see if you agree with me. “Rest is bad, and exercise is good.” Do you agree?
Well, if you are listening to this episode, you probably agree, or you would not be here in thefirst place. I hav e never met a runner that did not think that exercise was good, and that resting for prolonged periods of time was bad.
In fact, almost everybody who calls me for a second opinion consultation is somebody who has been injured, who has been told they have to rest, and they have been told they cannot exercise in order to get better. Sometimes that is true, but that is rarely the case when you have a foot and ankle injury because unless you fell off the roof and broke your back and both , then you can probably use one of your legs to exercise and maintain some of your running fitness while your other foot that is injured is resting and recovering.
You have to remember here that your goal is to run. In fact, your goal is probably to run some race that you are already signed up for that you’ve already paid for, and you might even have hotel reservations and a flight booked, that are non- refundable to do that race. So, I am sure you do not want to defer your entry. I am sure you do not want to cancel the race and you probably want to run it if you can. The way to do that is to stay as fit as possible.
One of the things that you can do is to exercise with the leg that is not injured. And no, you are not going to run, that is different. But what we are talking about is during this very brief period where you are really aggressively treating the injury on your injured foot, you work hard to maintain your running fitness, your core fitness, all the peripheral things that support you as a runner. It is very important to do that.
You have to think about why this is so important. Number one, it is important for you physically. It is also probably very important to you mentally and psychologically and it is going to be difficult to live with you as an injured runner who is not exercising at all. You may have already noticed that your spouse, your kids, your dog is reacting to you differently because you have not been exercising, so you are in a bad mood and doing any exercise even if it is one legged squats or exercises that only utilize one leg, well, that is going to help. Even cycling with one leg can help.
There are lots of things that you can do, and this may be your only outlet in terms of saving your running fitness and your sanity while you recover. You have to think about this. When you get injured, like why is it so important? Why do we talk about this? Well, a couple of things. Many runners are diligently following directions, and they are just resting but they are letting unnecessary atrophy settle in on that non-injured leg. Your injured foot has to be supported and protected throughout the early phases of your return to real activity, real workouts and running. The way that you do that is you make sure that the other foot is strong enough to carry it.
When you think about what limping is in terms of biomechanics, like what it means that it is physically happy when you see somebody do what we call limping, while all you are really doing is you are spending less time on the injured foot and more time on the non-injured foot. So, it stands to reason that if you really strengthen that other leg so that it can carry that other leg, that is going to be helpful, right? So, if you have two soldiers going through the woods, one of them gets hurt, one of them gets injured, one of the gets shot, the other one picks up and carry it, that other one has to be really strong to carry both of them.
It is the same way with your injured foot. You have got to protect that injured foot as much as possible by being strong enough to really absorb more force with the other foot when you return to your full workouts. So, that is why you have really got to think about what you can do. You have got to be creative, go to the gym, try machines that you have never tried. Try to do exercises that will really strengthen all the muscles in that non-injured foot while the other one is truly resting. That will help you get to back to running.
If you have a question for me, and you would like to get an answer, you can send it to me through the injured runners aid station. You can check that out at www.docontherun.com/aidstation. Thanks for listening and I will see you in the next episode.
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