Which is more important to increase first, after you have had a running injury, time or intensity? Well, that is a great question and that is what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
When you get injured and you return to running, your number one goal is to get as strong as possible, as fast as possible, without stressing the injured tissue enough to cause a re-injury. I know that seems obvious, but it is not obvious to the runners who call me, who have these questions about specific little things to do when you are returning to running and you have recovered from your running injury.
The idea of time or intensity is really important to consider, and I was just on a call with a trail runner, and she is recovering from a sesamoid bone injury as well as a peroneal tendon injury and what those things are specifically don’t really matter because this kind of applies to all forms of running injuries.
What she did was she started to do some activities outside and she was working toward running on long technical trail runs in the mountains and she is doing a lot of different forms of activity to supplement her running fitness. She is doing lots of rehab at home. She is doing lots of specific exercises on strength and balance.
But she asked me in respect to running, she is running on a flat trail. She is not running on technical trails, but she asked me whether or not she should be adding a lot more time or a lot more intensity to rebuild her running fitness and my response was really simple. You’re always better off and much safer adding time on your feet and exercises that will support your running fitness with very low stress applied to that injured tissue.
The way you think about this is that when you return to running, if you think about running, for example, on a treadmill or device that lowers the force of gravity, you have three variables at play. You have the amount of time that you’re running. You have the speed at which you’re running, and you have gravity. They get worse in that order.
Every single new exercise, every new distance, every new thing that you do and that you add to your exercise routine when you’re returning to full activity and running after an injury, every one of those new increases in stress is nothing more than one single experiment at a time. If you do this correctly, you can continue to ramp up and ramp up and ramp up and get back to activity a lot faster, but the experiments are always black and white, and they have to be for you to get a simple yes or no.
Either the activity that you’re doing, the new distance that you’re running, the speed at which you’re running, it is either deemed safe or it is deemed risky based on your response during that activity. And if you have any pain during the activity, you have any pain that evening, you have any pain the next morning, then you know it wasn’t safe.
So, back to the question about time versus intensity. Think about this for a second. If you do a long run at a slow pace, let’s just say 10 miles, not a really long run, but a kind of long run. You do 10 miles at a slow pace, which is more stressful on your body? Running 10 miles at a slow pace or running a 10k at race pace? I think most people would agree that running a lot faster at a much higher intensity is much more stressful. That is why you don’t go do 50-mile repeats when you’re doing a preparation for a 50-mile trail race. That would destroy your body. You can’t do that.
You have to make sure that you’re paying attention and if you start to cross over that line into the way too much zone, the zone where you’re going to get injured, well that is probably going to happen if you’re going at a high intensity as opposed to when you’re going at a low intensity for a longer period of time. I always try to have runners add more time on their feet in these runs as they’re ramping up because number one, it makes you feel better to run for a longer period of time and it is a lot less risky.
So, keep in mind, you have got to really make sure that you’re decreasing the stress and strain on the tissue, that you’re increasing your running fitness and you’re returning to running as quickly as possible if you really want to get back to the same kind of running you were doing before you injured yourself.
If you enjoy this episode, please like it, please subscribe, share it with a runner who needs to hear it and I’ll see you in the next training.
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