Timelines, forced decisions and action in injured runners, and that is what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
Last week, I was in Hawaii, and I was lecturing at the International Foot and Ankle Foundation meeting, where I had been invited to give several lectures on running injuries. One of those was about stress fractures.
In that particular lecture, which is a couple of hundred of physicians, podiatrists, foot and ankle surgeons, it is about trying to help them understand how they can look at these injuries differently and so, I had a few examples. These are real cases that I worked with, where one of them, for example, was a runner that thought he had a stress fracture just a couple of days before a 52K trail race with 11,000 feet of climbing, and he was supposed to be doing that race in only three days.
The other one was a calcaneal stress fracture. A woman, elite runner, wanted to run the Tokyo Marathon in only 12 days, and she couldn’t walk because of the calcaneal stress fracture, and she wanted to run under three hours. The other was a tibial stress fracture. This was a kid that had, number one on his cross-country team, had a tibial stress fracture, and he was going to be looking at colleges in only one month.
Why do I mention this? Three days, 12 days, one month. Those are very hard deadlines for all these athletes and so, I present these with the intent of teaching the doctors that they really have to consider these timelines. So, the amount of time that they have to heal it, that is the task in front of the doctor, is not the normal amount of time that it takes to heal a calcaneal stress fracture, or the normal amount of time it takes to heal a metatarsal stress fracture, or the normal amount of time that it usually takes to heal a tibial stress fracture. That kid wants to go run and be looking at colleges to try to get a college scholarship secured so he can run cross-country in college.
This woman wants to go to Tokyo and run in 12 days, and she wants to run under three hours, and she wants to finish. She doesn’t want to break it, but she wants to finish. And this guy wants to go run this 52K with 11,000 feet of climbing in only three days.
So, I tell the doctors, look, you have a goal, very standard goal that the runner has. They have a timeline. They have a date and a time and a place where they want to start this race, and they want to finish, and they don’t want to make the injury worse. If you only have 12 days to get this calcaneal stress fracture, the stress fracture in the heel bone, calmed down before the Tokyo marathon, you have 12 days. That suddenly changes what you do.
Agreed? Story is, of course, that she did run that race, she did finish. In fact, all three of these athletes got better within the timelines we were talking about, and I showed them how I did it. It’s not brain surgery, but you have to think hard about, okay, what is everything I can do to reduce the stress and strain on this thing enough that we can meet that deadline? What can we do to speed up the way that the bone is being made so that we can meet that deadline? What can we do differently to force decisions and take action to achieve the goal this runner has on the runner’s timeline? What’s valuable for you here is that now you understand that when you go to the doctor, if they just say, oh, it takes six weeks to heal this, that is malarkey. Not true.
The largest meta-analysis of runners ever looked at that came up with how long it takes to heal stress fractures, four weeks to 52 weeks is what they found in that study of all of these studies that have been published in this meta-analysis, four to 52 weeks, that is a month to a year. Don’t take that as an answer.
If they give you one number and they say most of my patients just take this long, then the next question is, well, then what can we do differently to try to get it to heal enough in this amount of time that I can do this thing on that day? That is their actual job. Force the timelines, get different actions, and you will get different results.
If you liked this episode, please like it, please subscribe. If you have a stress fracture of some variety and you’re worried about it and you want to understand the strategies I use with runners who call me for second opinions, like all those three I mentioned in this talk and the exact strategies I use with physicians at these medical conferences when I go lecture on running injuries, you can get it for free in the Stress Fracture Masterclass. Just go to www.docontherun.com/stressfracturemasterclass, sign up there, and I’ll see you in the training.
«« #943 Does a mallet toe lead to plantar plate sprain in a runner? | #945 Can a doctor do hammertoe surgery on a runner with only a needle »» |